Court Opinion

ID: 9552164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:05:38.05968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:42.326034
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J.
I concur in the judgment. I write separately to express some concerns about this court’s Unruh Civil Rights Act jurisprudence. (Civ. Code, § 51, hereafter sometimes the act or section 51.)
The Unruh Civil Rights Act, which applies to “all business establishments of every kind whatsoever” (Civ. Code, § 51), was not the Legislature’s first attempt to codify the state’s policy against arbitrary discrimination by persons and entities serving the public. The first such attempt, a predecessor of section 51, granted the right to “full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges” in a number of specifically designated enterprises (e.g., “inns, restaurants, hotels, eating houses, places where ice cream or soft drinks of any kind are sold for consumption on the premises, barber shops, bath houses, theaters, skating rinks, [and] public convey-, anees”), as well as “all other places of public accommodation or amusement . . . .” (Former Civ. Code, § 51, added by Stats. 1905, ch. 413, § 1, p. 553, amended by Stats. 1923, ch. 235, § 1, p. 485.) As the court explains, in *730apparent response to a number of appellate court decisions concluding the statute did not apply to a private cemetery, a dentist’s office, or a private school (see the cases cited in the maj. opn., ante, at p. 687), the Legislature in 1959 revised and expanded the prior law by enacting the current version of section 51.
As initially introduced, the bill that became the present act would have extended to “all public or private groups, organizations, associations, business establishments, schools, and public facilities,” as well as to the “purchase [of] real property” and “the services of any professional person, group or association.” (Assem. Bill No. 594 (1959 Reg. Sess.), as introduced Jan. 21, 1959, and as cited in Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & County Club (1995) 10 Cal.4th 594, 608 [42 Cal.Rptr.2d 50, 896 P.2d 776].) Evidently unable to achieve consensus on the aforementioned categories of facilities or specified entities, or on any particular combination thereof, the Legislature settled on the language we have today. In the ensuing years, it has been this court’s challenging task to apply that language—“business establishments of every kind whatsoever” (Civ. Code, § 51, italics added)—in a variety of contexts. Today we do so in the context of the Boy Scouts of America.
Virtually everyone knows something of the scouts. The image of youths pursuing outdoor and patriotic activities is entrenched in our culture. Sharing this background, many readers of the court’s opinion will intuitively accept its conclusion that the Boy Scouts is not a “business establishment[]” (Civ. Code, § 51) subject to the act. Because the conclusion may not be surprising, the analysis that produced it may not excite much interest outside of courts and law schools, even though the case itself has attracted some attention. Nevertheless, the reasons the court gives for its decision today have important social ramifications. Organizations, and the people they affect, are entitled to know with a fair degree of certainty whether the law applies to them or not. I fear, however, that our jurisprudence, including today’s decision, fails to provide useful guidance. I am further concerned that, without additional legislative input, predictability may remain an elusive goal.
This case arose because our past decisions supported a respectable argument that the Boy Scouts is a “business establishment[].” While we do not normally think of the scouts as an organization conducted for profit or as having a place of business, neither attribute has been required of a “business establishment[]” under our decisions. We have held the act applies to nonprofit (O’Connor v. Village Green Owners Assn. (1983) 33 Cal.3d 790, 795-796 [191 Cal.Rptr. 320, 662 P.2d 427]) and charitable organizations (Isbister v. Boys’ Club of Santa Cruz, Inc. (1985) 40 Cal.3d 72, 76, 84 [219 *731Cal.Rptr. 150, 707 P.2d 212]), as well as to entities without fixed locations (Burks v. Poppy Construction Co. (1962) 57 Cal.2d 463, 468-469 [20 Cal.Rptr. 609, 370 P.2d 313]). We also have held the act applicable to ostensibly private clubs. (Warfield, v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club, supra, 10 Cal.4th at p. 630.) That the scouting organization involved in this case, Mount Diablo Council of the Boy Scouts of America, happens to operate a public retail store invited analogy to the country club in Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club, which we held was a “business establishment” “because it engaged in a variety of ‘business transactions’ with nonmembers on a regular basis . . . .” (Ibid.) Furthermore, our decision in Isbister v. Boys’ Club of Santa Cruz, Inc., supra, 40 Cal.3d 72, suggested the act would apply to “broad-based nonprofit community service organizations” (id. at p. 79) similar to the Boy Scouts, even though the court expressly reserved judgment on the scouts, themselves (id. at p. 84, fn. 14).
It was these decisions that led the trial court to conclude the Boy Scouts is a “business establishment!]” subject to the act. While the court today rejects that conclusion, it was not irrational or irreconcilable with precedent: Our prior decisions pointed to such a result. Nevertheless, our task in the first instance is, as always, to construe the statute and, if possible, to implement the intent of the Legislature. Because it seems highly unlikely the Legislature intended the act to apply to the scouts, I concur in the judgment. I write separately to point out that the court’s rationale for excluding the scouts from the act introduces three new elements into our Unruh Civil Rights Act jurisprudence.
First, the court suggests an organization can be broken down into its constituent functions for the purpose of deciding whether the act applies. Thus, the majority concludes that “with regard to its membership policies and decisions,” defendant is not a business establishment within the meaning of the act (maj. opn., ante, at p. 673, italics added; see also id. at pp. 685, 696, 698-699), while strongly disavowing any implication the act might permit discrimination in the Boy Scout’s retail stores {id. at pp. 700-701). This piecemeal mode of analysis, however, seems at odds with the language of the act, which refers simply to “business establishments” (Civ. Code, § 51), not to the “business functions of establishments.” This approach also promises further controversy. By implying the act will now be applied on a function-by-function basis, rather than to whole “establishments” {ibid.), the court multiplies the number of abstract objects to which the act in theory might or might not apply and, thus, the occasions for litigation. Under this state of affairs, few organizations will have an incentive not to litigate their status under the act.
Second, the court reasons that an organization may sell goods to the general public without becoming a “business establishment!],” so long as it *732does not sell the “primary incidents and benefits of membership in the organization.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 700.) In support, the court cites Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club, supra, 10 Cal.4th 594; but in Warfield we employed no such distinction. Indeed, to have drawn such a distinction would not have supported the outcome in that case. In Warfield, the principal “incident of membership” in the country club was the right to participate freely in its social activities—something the club did not sell to the general public.
Third, the court seems to imply that an organization may not qualify as a “business establishment!]” in part because it is not a public accommodation. (See maj. opn., ante, at pp. 697-698.) The implication arises from the manner in which the court distinguishes Isbister v. Boys’ Club of Santa Cruz, Inc., supra, 40 Cal.Sd 72. In Isbister, the court essentially held that all public accommodations were “business establishments” under the act. The court based this conclusion on the assumption the act was intended to apply more broadly than its statutory predecessor, which had expressly applied to “ ‘places of public accommodation.’ ” (40 Cal.3d at p. 83.) Isbister’s conclusion can fairly be criticized on the ground that the term used in the present act—“business establishment!]”—neither refers to nor obviously includes all public accommodations. But assuming for the sake of argument Isbister correctly held all public accommodations are business establishments, it still does not follow that the failure of an organization to be “the functional equivalent of a traditional place of public accommodation” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 697) has a negative bearing on the act’s applicability. To quote Isbister, the act “was intended at a minimum to continue the coverage of ‘public accommodations.’ ” (40 Cal.3d at p. 83, italics added.)
After three decades of decisions, including today’s, addressing the question whether particular entities are “business establishments” subject to the act,1 a competent attorney in many foreseeable cases still would not be able to advise a client with a reasonable degree of certainty whether the act *733applies. In large part this is a result of the 1959 Legislature’s failure to define the term. When legislative consensus fails on such a fundamental question as the reach of an antidiscrimination law, however, to look to courts for a clear solution to the underlying problem may be unrealistic. The exercise of supplying definitions for undefined statutory terms is not a comfortable one forjudges, who generally would rather apply law than make it. Forced to supply definitions, cautious judges tend to prefer definitions more vague than precise, because the former tend to be more difficult to refute. The more precise a definition, the more vulnerable it is to the argument that, “if the Legislature had meant that, it could easily have said so.” The most cautious way of all for courts to proceed in supplying meaning to a statutory term is to offer, in place of a definition, an “approach,” consisting of a universe of considerations to be weighed and balanced. So long as the outcomes of cases decided in this manner do not seem inherently implausible, the Legislature has little incentive to take on the politically difficult task of clarifying an important but controversial statute. This way of proceeding, however, is also the most productive of litigation and the least helpful to those who must attempt to comply with the law. Regrettably, this is the path our decisions seem likely to follow in the absence of clearer statutory guidance.

See Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club, supra, 10 Cal.4th 594 (country club a “business establishment”); Isbister v. Boys’ Club of Santa Cruz, Inc., supra, 40 Cal.3d 72 (nonprofit recreational facility a “business establishment”); O’Connor v. Village Green Owners Assn., supra, 33 Cal.3d 790 (homeowners association a “business establishment”); Burks v. Poppy Construction Co., supra, 57 Cal.2d 463 (real estate seller a “business establishment”). See also Harris v. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (1995) 40 Cal.App.4th 16 [46 Cal.Rptr.2d 833] (reversing summary judgment for expressive organization and finding a question of fact as to whether it is a “business establishment”); Rotary Club of Duarte v. Board of Directors (1986) 178 Cal.App.3d 1035 [224 Cal.Rptr. 213] (civic organization a “business establishment”); Curran v. Mount Diablo Council of the Boy Scouts (1983) 147 Cal.App.3d 712 [195 Cal.Rptr. 325, 38 A.L.R.4th 607] (rejecting on demurrer the argument that the Boy Scouts are not a “business establishment”); Pines v. Tomson (1984) 160