Court Opinion

ID: 9763103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:36:41.516154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:39.396765
License: Public Domain

PALIADINO, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority concludes that there is a customer preference defense which justifies the unquestioned gender-based discrimination in this case. I respectfully note that the cases relied upon by the majority which uphold a customer preference defense to gender-based discrimination all involve an employment problem. Without a doubt, this case is a public accommodation problem, not an employment problem. This case concerns the participation by members of the public in an exercise program at a business establishment, not the hiring or firing of employees, or anything else associated with employment.
*131In recognition of the fact that the customer preference defense has only been applied to employment problems, the majority proposes to extend the customer preference defense to public accommodation problems upon a bona fide public accommodation qualification theory. This qualification “may justify otherwise illegal sex discrimination” and exists in places of public accommodation “where there is a distinctly private activity involving the exposure of intimate body parts____” Majority Opinion at 123. However, this case does not involve the exposure of intimate body parts. Rather, this case involves an activity, exercise, which is performed outside the home, in a group setting, and in full exercise attire. This activity, therefore, cannot be so “distinctly private” so as to justify the exclusion of all men from a public exercise facility based upon customer preference.
As the validity of the bona fide public accommodation qualification hinges upon the exposure of intimate body parts, so, too, does the customer preference defense. In all of the cases cited by the majority which uphold the customer preference defense, the exposure of intimate body parts creates a legitimate privacy interest. This legitimate privacy interest is what justifies the discrimination. Thus, to justify the discrimination in the present case, the majority attempts to create a legitimate privacy interest in exercise even though this activity does not involve the exposure of intimate body parts.
The majority attempts to legitimize exercise as a privacy interest through the testimony of several female LivingWell members and the testimony of Dr. Tanenbaum. The female members testified that they would no longer patronize the LivingWell facilities if the facilities became coed because they would be embarrassed to exercise in the presence of males. Dr. Tanenbaum testified that it would be psychologically detrimental for these women to exercise in front of men. The majority, based on this testimony, concludes that even though this interest in exercising in an all-female environment may not be commonly held, the interest is *132nevertheless a legitimate privacy interest because it is sincerely held.
However, this privacy interest can neither be legitimate, nor the testimony relied on credible because males are in fact present at the facilities where these women exercise. At two out of the three facilities which the females who testified patronize,1 men are employed in positions ranging from manager and service personnel to aerobics instructor. Stipulations of Fact, Exhibit D. In addition, Dr. Tanenbaum’s testimony was based on the interview of eighteen female members from three different LivingWell facilities. At all three of these facilities, men are employed in positions such as manager, trainer, aerobics instructor and lifeguard. Stipulations of Fact, Exhibit D. The only job restrictions for these male employees involve the taking of measurements of the female members, unless consented to, and exclusion from the women’s locker room. Stipulations of Fact, No. 85. Therefore, the majority’s conclusion that gender-based discrimination is justified in this case because “it is impossible to allow men to be present while these women are exercising, and, at the same time protect their right to privacy” is totally at odds with the testimony in the record. Majority Opinion at 130.
As the above quote illustrates, the majority is striving to “protect” the supposed privacy interest of the female LivingWell members by perpetuating gender-based discrimination at these LivingWell facilities. However, what the majority is in reality perpetuating is an antiquated notion regarding the status of women in society. That antiquated notion was best articulated by President Judge Ludlow of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County in an 1884 case involving a motion for admission of a woman into the practicing bar. He stated in denying the motion:
[T]he Creator of the universe, for a reason which any reasonable being ought to consider self-evident, made a *133distinction between the sexes, and saw fit in the propagation of the species to protect the physically weaker sex by laws as inflexible as other and general laws governing the universe, and to place under the protection of the male sex the female, simply because as a general and universal law applicable to all created living organisms the female requires protection.
In re Application of Mrs. C.B. Kilgore, 14 Wkly.Notes Cas. 255, 256 (1884).
Although we are now almost a century away in time from Judge Ludlow’s statement, we are obviously not as far away in thought. Women have, over the past century, managed to cast off this “shield of protection” and have assumed roles in society equal to that of men’s. But women cannot continue to maintain that equality when decisions such as this purport to “protect” women by keeping them separate, for separation is inherently unequal.

. Although there was no actual testimony from the Bala Cynwyd facility member, counsel stipulated that she would offer the same testimony as the other three members who testified.