Court Opinion

ID: 9785910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:47:36.206792+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:21.033573
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring and Dissenting
I concur in the majority’s conclusion that because the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civ. Code, §51) prohibits discrimination against registered domestic partners on the basis of their marital status and plaintiffs are registered domestic partners under the Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003 (Stats. 2003, ch. 421, § 2), defendant Bernardo Heights Country Club (BHCC) is not entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs’ claim for injunctive relief against marital status discrimination. (Maj. opn., ante, pt. II.B.) I respectfully disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that “legitimate business interests facially justified BHCC’s spousal benefit policy” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 851) before January 1, 2005, the effective date of the current act. As the majority concedes (id. at p.852, fn. 10), plaintiffs have presented evidence that they were registered as domestic partners under the partnership statutes in effect between January 1, 2000, and January 1, 2005. The business interests the majority cites as justifying the earlier discrimination are the same interests BHCC posits and the majority rejects as justifying BHCC’s current discrimination. In my view, those business interests went no further in justifying discrimination against domestic partners registered under the previous act than they do now.
In its brief on the merits, BHCC posited the following business justifications for its spousal benefit policy: (1) to restrict access in order to ensure availability of tee times, avoid slow play, and preserve the golf course’s condition; (2) to attract new members and discourage “free riding” guests from playing repeatedly without joining; and (3) to help create a “family-friendly environment.” I agree that restricting access, attracting members, and maintaining a congenial atmosphere for families are legitimate goals for a country club. But in light of this court’s holding that those interests do not justify discrimination against domestic partners registered under the current *856act, BHCC, in my view, cannot demonstrate, as a matter of law on the summary judgment record, that these goals justified discriminating against couples in registered domestic partnerships in the 2000-2004 period.
First, with regard to access, BHCC reasonably declines to “extend unlimited golfing privileges to members’ friends.” But to provide club privileges to registered domestic partners would not have been equivalent to opening the club to unlimited use by members’ friends: even under California’s first domestic partnership statute, effective January 1, 2000, partners were far more than “friends.” Under that law (Stats. 1999, ch. 588, § 2), partners were defined as “two adults who have chosen to share one another’s lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring.” (Fam. Code, former § 297, subd. (a).)11 A partnership could be formed only by jointly filing a notarized declaration and form with the Secretary of State (former § 298), in which the partners stated they shared a residence and “agree[d] to be jointly responsible for each other’s basic living expenses incurred during the domestic partnership” (former § 297, subd. (b)(2)). The Secretary of State kept a registry of partnerships and provided the partners with a copy of the registered form. (Former § 298.5, subd. (b).) A person could not register in a partnership if married, could have only one partner at a time, and could not register a new partnership for six months after formally dissolving the old one. (Former §§ 297, 298.5, 299.)
A country club member might have dozens of golfing friends, but even under the law from 2000 through 2004 the member could have had only one registered domestic partner at a time and was restricted in how often he or she could change registered partners. As far as the parties’ briefs reveal, plaintiffs were the only registered partners seeking benefits at BHCC, but even at a club with several members in registered partnerships, according golfing privileges to each such member would not have significantly impacted tee times or course conditions. What the majority observes about plaintiffs’ partnership today was equally true in 2000 to 2004: extending club benefits to plaintiff French “would not create the stampede on the fairway that BHCC appears to envision.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 847.)
BHCC’s second asserted concern, that extending privileges would result in “free riding, i.e. inviting guests who are avid golfers who would use the club repeatedly, at a fraction of what it would cost to become a member,” is similarly no more applicable to registered domestic partners under the 2000-2004 laws than to partners registered under the current act. Providing registered domestic partners club privileges would not have allowed a club member simply to get his or her favorite golfing partner onto the course as a domestic partner; rather, the member would have had to declare to the *857Secretary of State, on pain of misdemeanor criminal liability, that the two shared a residence and were financially responsible for each other’s needs, a responsibility enforceable by creditors. (Former §§ 297, subd. (e), 298, subd. (c).) That significant numbers of club members would have falsely so declared, thus subjecting themselves to financial responsibilities and possible criminal liability and, in many cases, impliedly misrepresenting their sexual orientation, is highly unlikely.
Denying registered domestic partners club privileges could, in theory, have encouraged some partners of members to purchase their own memberships. But that is equally true today, under the current version of the domestic partnership law, yet the majority holds that neither that, nor any other legitimate business interest, currently justifies denying privileges to domestic partners. For that matter, the asserted justification would then, as now, apply in vastly higher numbers to members’ spouses: had BHCC not extended club privileges to spouses, many husbands and wives of members could have been expected to purchase their own memberships, thus improving BHCC’s business position.
BHCC presumably did not deny privileges to spouses because to do so would have impeded the club’s third asserted goal, that of “creating a family-friendly environment by welcoming the immediate family of married members.” But that goal, as well, fails to justify denying privileges to registered domestic partners. By “family-friendly environment,” BHCC, which denies having intentionally discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation, cannot mean a club devoid of gay and lesbian members. As the Unruh Civil Rights Act proscribes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (maj. opn., ante, at p. 852, see Harris v. Capital Growth Investors XIV (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1142, 1155 [278 Cal.Rptr. 614, 805 P.2d 873]), a business could not defend against liability for marital status discrimination by claiming such discrimination was warranted as a means to effectuate sexual orientation discrimination. A prohibited discriminatory goal cannot itself constitute a legitimate business interest justifying discrimination.
By a “family-friendly” club environment, then, I take BHCC to mean not an environment excluding gay and lesbian couples, but, rather, an environment that welcomes members’ immediate families and includes them in club activities, promoting fuller social relationships within the club membership. This is a legitimate goal; BHCC reasonably could want club members to get to know each other better by golfing and socializing with one another’s families, but this goal would be disserved, not served, by the club’s policy of denying club privileges to registered domestic partners of members. Even under California’s first domestic partnership law, a couple registered as domestic partners necessarily lived together, were financially responsible for *858one another’s needs, and had “chosen to share one another’s lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring.” (Former § 297.) Again, what the majority says of the current day was no less true in the 2000-2004 period: the interest in “promoting a ‘family-friendly environment’ ... is not furthered by excluding families formed through domestic partnership.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 847.)
In finding that legitimate business interests justified BHCC’s marital status discrimination prior to 2005, the majority repeats BHCC’s claims its policy avoided overutilization, encouraged new memberships, and helped create a family-friendly environment. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 851-852.) But, as shown above, these interests no more justified denying club privileges to members’ registered domestic partners before January 1, 2005, than they did after that date.
The majority also echoes, as an asserted business interest, BHCC’s claim (in discussing the consequences of holding that the Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits marital status discrimination) that it would have to make club facilities freely available to members’ friends because, absent a marriage requirement, it would have no way, without intruding on members’ privacy, to distinguish among nonmarital relationships. BHCC, the majority reasons, was not required to use criteria or methods of proof that were “arguably less reliable and more intrusive than a marriage license to ascertain the nature and stability of its unmarried members’ relationships.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 852.) While this reason justifies rejecting plaintiffs’ claim that BHCC’s policy illegally discriminates against all unmarried couples, it carries no justificatory power with regard to registered domestic partners, whose status is readily and nonintrusively verifiable by their registration. The majority makes precisely this observation in rejecting BHCC’s justification for its current discrimination (id. at p. 847), but unaccountably ignores it in addressing past discrimination.
The majority’s fundamental illogic lies in virtually ignoring plaintiffs’ previous domestic partner registration in considering their claim of discrimination before 2005, while relying heavily on the legal effect of their present registration under the current law. In a footnote, the majority asserts plaintiffs “do not base their marital status discrimination claim for this period of time on those [earlier domestic partnership] statutes.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 852, fn. 10.) But in their opening brief, plaintiffs relied expressly on the earlier laws, arguing that BHCC could have verified couplehood without an intrusive investigation because “since January 1, 2000, California has allowed non-married couples to register as domestic partners with the state (see Fam. Code, §§ 297-298.5), providing a simple ‘bright line’ if one were needed.”
*859At oral argument, to be sure, plaintiffs’ counsel explained that plaintiffs’ marital status discrimination claim for damages did not depend on the domestic partnership laws; BHCC’s discrimination, he argued, was and is illegal as to all unmarried couples, whether or not registered as domestic partners. But this description of plaintiffs’ broad theory applied as well to plaintiffs’ claim for injunctive relief, which the majority allows to go forward. Counsel, moreover, acknowledged that the current law provided him with the strongest case for equal treatment of domestic partners and married couples. In so doing, counsel did not concede that the Unruh Civil Rights Act afforded no protection to domestic partners under prior law; nor did he argue, contrary to plaintiffs’ opening brief, that plaintiffs’ registration as domestic partners (under either law) should be ignored if the court rejected their broad claim of discrimination against all unmarried couples.12
Like the majority, I would reject plaintiffs’ broad claim that the Unruh Civil Rights Act forbids BHCC from discriminating between married and any unmarried couples. But plaintiffs’ having advanced such a broad claim should not blind us to the narrower, more meritorious argument they have also made-that BHCC had no legitimate business interest justifying denial of club privileges to registered domestic partners, whose registration with the Secretary of State, as plaintiffs point out, provides “a simple ‘bright line’ if one were needed.” The majority recognizes this as to plaintiffs’ claim for prospective relief but illogically denies it as to their claim for damages. For this reason, I respectfully dissent from part H.C. of the majority opinion insofar as it rejects the claim for damages for marital status discrimination.
I also differ in one respect with the majority’s analysis of plaintiffs’ claim of sexual orientation discrimination. The majority holds, and I agree, that the evidence of discriminatory animus on the part of BHCC’s directors, together with evidence that BHCC informally extended spousal benefits to unmarried heterosexual members while repeatedly refusing to modify its policies so as to extend such benefits to plaintiffs and other homosexual couples, supports a *860claim of discriminatory application. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 854.) But the same evidence would also appear to support plaintiffs’ claim that BHCC maintained its spousal benefit limitation as a “subterfuge” or “device” (Roth v. Rhodes (1994) 25 Cal.App.4th 530, 538 [30 Cal.Rptr.2d 706]) to accomplish prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Contrary to the majority’s characterization, plaintiffs do not ask the court to infer such intentional sexual orientation discrimination “solely from such [differential] effects” on homosexual members (maj. opn., ante, at p. 854), but, rather, point to what they contend is significant record evidence “that this was [BHCC’s] specific intent in maintaining this policy.” The evidence that BHCC used its marital status rule as a subterfuge for intentional sexual orientation discrimination may not be sufficient to survive summary judgment, but the majority should at least acknowledge that plaintiffs, in a contention distinct from what the majority characterizes as a disparate impact claim, do argue for such a conclusion.

All further unspecified statutory references are to the Family Code.

The majority also points to procedural and substantive differences between current and prior domestic partnership laws. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 852, fn. 10.) In my view, however, neither that domestic partnerships prior to 2005 could be dissolved without a judicial proceeding nor that they accorded partners more limited substantive rights than current law demonstrates that the legitimate business interests BHCC posits justified its discriminatory policy. The goals of limiting access and preventing “free riding” were met by provisions preventing a partnership from being quickly or informally exchanged for a new partnership. (Former §§ 298.5, subd. (c), 299, subd. (b).) As to creation of a family-friendly environment, that the original law defined domestic partners as “shar[ing] one another’s lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring” (former § 297, subd. (a)) and made partners financially responsible for one another’s needs (id., subd. (b)(2)) amply demonstrates that, even prior to 2005, partners were, as the Legislature characterized them, one another’s “immediate family members.” (Stats. 1999, ch. 588, § 1.)