Court Opinion

ID: 9685441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:37:39.689177+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:06.023276
License: Public Domain

NEUMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority’s opinion departs so dramatically from this court’s proud history of leadership in the field of civil rights — and especially with regard to freedom from discrimination in accommodations — that I must respectfully dissent.1
The issue, of course, is whether a membership organization like the Jaycees comes within the ambit of “public accommodation” as defined in our civil rights statute. I would readily concede that the term “public accommodation” commonly connotes the “spatial dimension” upon which the majority’s narrow gaze is fixed. But I am convinced that the legislature did not mean to confine the proscriptions of section 601A.7 to structures built of bricks and mortar. By its terms, the statute also prohibits the discriminatory refusal to furnish “advantages, ... services, or privileges” because of “race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion or disability” by any “establishment or facility of whatever kind, nature, or class.” Iowa Code §§ 601A.7(l)(a), 601A.2(10).
The majority summarily dismisses the Jaycees as an “establishment,” in apparent satisfaction with Webster’s Third International Dictionary definition of the term as “a more or less fixed ... place of business or residence.” I think it noteworthy that a *457more recent edition of Webster’s offers an appreciably different slant on the term’s common usage: something established; a settled arrangement; a permanent civil or military organization; a place of business or residence with its furnishings and staff; a public or private institution; an established order of society, e.g., a group of social, economic, and political leaders who form a ruling class; a controlling group; the act of establishing; the state of being established. See Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 425 (1986).
Much more than a duel of dictionaries, however, is at stake. The Minnesota Supreme Court, interpreting a very similar civil rights statute in the identical context, observed:
The national organization contends that only if it were to “establish a business at a physical location within the State of Minnesota, and invite the patronage of the general public * * *” would that “place” or “facility” constitute a place of public accommodation under Minn.Stat. § 363.01(18) (1980). That argument substitutes a literal, ordinary definition of “place of public accommodation” for the one enacted by the legislature. ...
Food and lodging do not exhaust the category of a “business * * * facility of any kind * * * whose goods, * * * privileges, [and] advantages are * * * sold or otherwise made available to the public.” Leadership skills are “goods,” business contacts and employment promotions are “privileges” and “advantages” and each site in the State of Minnesota where the sale of those “goods” is solicited, promoted, and consummated is unquestionably a “business facility.”
United States Jaycees v. McClure, 305 N.W.2d 764, 771-72 (Minn.1981) (citations omitted).
On the Jaycees’ appeal from the McClure decision, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the Minnesota court’s reasoning, stating:
This expansive definition reflects a recognition of the changing nature of the American economy and of the importance, both to the individual and to society, of removing the barriers to economic advancement and political and social integration that have historically plagued certain disadvantaged groups, including women. Thus, in explaining its conclusion that the Jaycees local chapters are “place[s] of public accommodations” within the meaning of the Act, the Minnesota court noted the various commercial programs and benefits offered to members.... Assuring women equal access to such goods, privileges and advantages clearly furthers compelling state interests.
Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 626, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 3254, 82 L.Ed.2d 462, 476-77 (1984) (citations omitted).
The majority discounts such observations as irrelevant to the question of whether, as a matter of semantics, a membership organization can be synonymous with public accommodation. But lest there be any mistake concerning the Supreme Court’s attitude on the subject, we would be wise to consider the Court’s 1987 decision in Board of Directors of Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte, 481 U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1940, 95 L.Ed.2d 474 (1987). There the Supreme Court considered a challenge to Rotary’s male-only membership policy in light of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act which provides, in part:
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, or national origin are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.
Cal.Civ.Code § 51 (West 1982). Although the case principally focused on the Rotari-ans’ claimed right of intimate association under the first amendment, the Court did not ignore the underlying purpose of California’s anti-discrimination statute:
In Roberts we recognized that the State’s compelling interest in assuring equal access to women extends to the acquisition of leadership skills and business contacts as well as tangible goods *458and services. The Unruh Act plainly serves this interest.
Id. at -, 107 S.Ct. at 1948, 95 L.Ed.2d at 487 (citations omitted).
Given the opportunity of choosing this broader view of public accommodation as a way of pursuing “the profoundly important goal of ensuring nondiscriminatory access to commercial opportunities in our society,” see New York State Club Ass’n, Inc. v. City of New York, — U.S. —, —, 108 S.Ct. 2225, 2237, 101 L.Ed.2d 1, 19 (1988) (O’Connor, J. concurring), the majority chose instead to adhere to the restrictive notion that a place is a place is a place. We may fault the legislature for such a narrow definition, but by failing to construe our civil rights statute “broadly to effectuate its purposes,” see § 601A.18, the majority has sent a message to the people of Iowa that Jaycees’ and Rotary’s newly adopted, nondiscriminatory membership policies were a pointless exercise in this state. I cannot join in ascribing to the legislature such an unenlightened view.
LARSON, SCHULTZ, and LAVORATO, JJ., join this dissent.

. In 1873 we rejected the notion that freedom from racial discrimination in riverboat accommodations was no more than a social privilege, unprotected by our constitution:
It cannot be doubted that [plaintiff] was excluded from the table and cabin, not because others would have been degraded and she elevated in society, but because of prejudice entertained against her race, growing out of its former condition of servitude — a prejudice, be it proclaimed to the honor of our people, that is fast giving way to nobler sentiments, and, it is hoped, will soon be entombed with its parent, slavery.
Coger v. The N.W. Union Packet Co., 37 Iowa 145, 158 (1873).