The Orange County Register reports that the California Senate passed a bill this week, sponsored by Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to “protect California’s foreign language speakers” by making it illegal for the state’s businesses to require its employees to speak a specific language be spoken at the business unless it qualifies for a narrowly defined business necessity. [PDF]
Such discrimination is already prohibited against employees or renters under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. Yee’s measure would extend the protection to customers and allow them to sue privately and receive minimum damages of $4,000 per violation.
Opponents complain that the proposed law would generate “meritless lawsuits to be filed for the sole purpose of obtaining a quick settlement.” They’re right.
Infractions of the Americans with Disabilities Act—such as uninsulated pipes under a bathroom sink or a bathroom mirror installed higher than required specifications, each carrying a $4,000 per violation price tag—have already set a destructive precedent.
Two years ago in Munson v. Del Taco, Inc., the California Supreme Court overturned an earlier 2006 decision in Gunther v. Lin that required a showing of intent discrimination in order to qualify for the minimum $4,000-per-infraction awards. In 1992, the California Legislature amended the Civil Code to make violations of the ADA also a violation of the Unruh Act, the state’s civil rights act. As the Santa Ana Court of Appeal noted, ADA violations are hyper-technical, and practically impossible not to violate at some point or another, which tends to explain why the ADA—unlike the Unruh Act—does not authorize private litigation. Gunther, then, reasonably extended this understanding to the interpretation of California’s law:
And it was precisely because it was so easy for businesspeople—particularly small businesspeople—to inadvertently violate the ADA that Congress limited the circumstances under which they might be sued for such a technical violation. Under the ADA, a private individual suing a businessperson has no right to damages absent intentional discrimination.
. . . .
. . . . The alternative interpretation, as a number of federal courts have already indicated . . . , has led to unconscionable abuses.
Upon prevailing at the California Supreme Court, Gunther’s attorney, Marc Angelucci, stridently characterized the lower court’s ruling as “a results-driven, ass-backwards judicial activist decision from the start.”
Angelucci himself is famous in this area of the law. He’s the man who helped spur the end of "ladies night" drink specials in California by suing an establishment in Los Angeles. The courts agreed with Angelucci by noting that the Unruh Act prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, language spoken, disability, medical condition, marital status or sexual orientation.
There are lots of lawyers like Angelucci who depend on laws like Yee’s to file strike suits against businesses. These laws create a cottage industry of unscrupulous attorneys who file thousands of shake-down suits each year, constituting a punitive and unjust tax on California’s businesses. By and large, these are small businesses who cannot afford the upwards of $100,000 to defend such suits.
In the case of Yee’s language discrimination law, small businesses would be put to the choice of settling with lawyers like Angelucci for $4,000 or a multiple thereof, or else go to the steep expense of a trial at which they would be forced to prove that all of the following are true:
(A) The language restriction or requirement is necessary for the
safe and efficient operation of the business.
(B) The language restriction or requirement effectively fulfills
the business purpose it is supposed to serve.
(C) An alternative practice to the language restriction or
requirement that would accomplish the business purpose equally
well with a lesser discriminatory impact does not exist.
To lawyers, the subjective language in boldface mean costly and hard-fought evidentiary battles, probably before a jury.
Yee’s bill is a bad idea for California.
Tim Kowal should do his research before stating what I “rely” on. I have not done ADA or Unruh Act lawsuits in a long time. But yes, I totally support them. People like Kowal conveniently don’t mention that small businesses who can’t afford to fix their barriers are exempt from the lawsuits. He also fails to mention that even though the ADA has been around for many years scores of businesses still don’t use ramps and fail to remove their barriers, and that the AG does virtually nothing about that. And, of couse, he never mentions that it took these ADA plaintiffs to force serious changes, as thousands of businesses suddenly start removing their barriers after they hear about the lawsuits in the media and elsewhere.
So as long as the ADA plaintiffs are willing to settle low with smaller businesses who agree early on to remove their barriers (as opposed to those who puff up, talk tough and put on a fight), I support them.
Thank you again, California Supreme Court, for upholding the law.
Marc,
I did not represent that you had recently litigated any ADA or Unruh lawsuits. I simply linked to and quoted from a piece describing an instance in which you apparently did.
Also, I did not purport to challenge the requirement of installing ramps or removing barriers. What I cited were the kinds of hyper-technical violations that you and your client exploited in Gunther v. Lin. Since you mentioned it has been a “long time” since that case, here are the facts from the opinion to refresh your recollection:
Your lawsuit was, in my humble opinion, an abuse of your privilege as a member of the California Bar. But because we can never expect to be rid of lawyers like you, we must look to our lawmakers and jurists to account for you when crafting our laws. It is with this in mind that I contend Yee’s language “discrimination” bill would make a very bad law.
“So as long as the ADA plaintiffs are willing to settle low with smaller businesses who agree early on to remove their barriers (as opposed to those who puff up, talk tough and put on a fight), I support them. ”
I notice that the so-called “lawyers” rarely hit big businesses – who are ready, willing and able to fight these extortionists in court.
“… small businesses who can’t afford to fix their barriers are … are exempt from the lawsuits.”
That will come as a surprise to those small businesses that have almost gone bankrupt because of these nuisance suits. Examples:
QUESTIONABLE ADA LAWSUITS /a>
“A sign that hangs a few inches too low or a toilet roll holder that sits a tad high might seem like trivial stuff. But such violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have cost developers in California, Florida and other states dearly, in what some are calling extortion by unscrupulous lawyers.
Because the infractions are genuine, the suits are not legally frivolous. But the goal behind the actions, the developers say, is to collect legal fees rather than to help the disabled.
“The intention was simply to shake down these businesses,” said Elizabeth Nicolson, legislative director for U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who has introduced legislation to address the issue.
Disabilities Act Lawsuit Called Legalized Extortion By Defendants
“The litigation is forcing some Northern California businesses to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement costs.
Federal ADA laws allow lawsuits to force companies to make their public spaces to be accessible to disabled people. Jim Sanford (pictured, left), of Sacramento, has filed 121 ADA lawsuits in three years. They all allege that his civil rights as a disabled person were violated.”
The very fact that he settles out of court proves that he has no interest in “helping the handicapped”. He’s after the Big Bucks.
ZZMike said: “I notice that the so-called “lawyers” rarely hit big businesses – who are ready, willing and able to fight these extortionists in court.”
Not true. You should do your research, perhaps even look at the activities page of the Nationial Coalition For Men http://www.ncfm.org.
Just as an example, we sued Club Med for giving free flights only to women but not men. They had all their biggy lawyers and still lost. I sued the State of California for discriminating against male victims of domestic violence, taking on the State Attorney General, and I still won and got the discriminatory statute declared unconstutitional. San Francisco Chronicle, “Appeals Court Decision Supports Battered Men” (10/16/08)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/15/BA3S13HOLS.DTL
Sacramento Bee, “Court: End Domestic Violence Program Discrimination” (10/16/08)
http://www.sacbee.com/latest/story/1319004.html
I also sued the Century Supper Club, a large night club in Century City, which was in no way a small business, for not only for charging men a higher fee but also for targetting only males for security pat-downs. Their attorneys fought it all the way to the CA Supreme Court, though they lost.
In alot of other cases, we have just given warnings in writing beforehand, such as when the San Diego YWCA was charging boys more than girls to skateboard, or what certain sporting events charged men but didn’t charge women. Again, some of this is on the NCFM website. http://www.ncfm.org
No, we don’t aways win. But we keep going whether we win or lose. That’s how changes are being made, since the Attorney General does nothing about it.
ZZMike also said: “The very fact that he settles out of court proves that he has no interest in “helping the handicapped”. He’s after the Big Bucks.”
Again, nonsense. Anytime I settled with someone it was mandatory that they changed their discriminatory policy or removed the barriers. Those who were willing to do that early on got off with a very reasonable settlement. The puff-up-talk-tough types were the ones I would take all the way to trial. Some won, some didn’t, but it always created change when the media told the story. That’s ultimately the only thing making businesses remove their barriers.
I’ve been a men’s rights activist for over 10 years and used to do mental health disability law for nonprofits, and I’ll always support these suits as long as small businesses are given a chance to settle low if they remove their barriers early on.
“Again, nonsense. Anytime I settled with someone it was mandatory that they changed their discriminatory policy or removed the barriers. ”
I concede that – and perhaps you’re in the majority. But there are still “ambulance chasers” who specialize in small businesses that can’t afford the fight. And those guys tarnish the reputation of the rest. Such as the guy who filed 121 suits in 3 years.
I also think it is absolutely absurd to sue a restaurant for “Lady’s Day” prices. People who object to such practices need not patronize them.
Finally, bringing suit simply because a mirror is 3/4″ too high is nothing less than harassment. If the only bathroom is on the second floor, and there’s no elevator, that’s another matter.
Yeah, it appears Mr. Kowal’s research skills are lacking, because it was not Mr. Angelucci who “helped spur the end of “ladies night” drink specials in California by suing an establishment in Los Angeles”; instead, it was Dennis Koire who took his case, Koire v. Metro Car Wash (1985) 40 Cal.3d 24, all the way to the California Supreme Court where the Court unanimously ruled Ladies’ Day and Ladies’ Night promotions that charge men more than women for the same goods or services violate the Unruh Civil Right Act.
Does Mr. Kowal somehow think such sex-based disparate pricing is okay? If so, someone ought to see what he charges his male and female clients.
It was Mr. Angelucci who a generation later courageously took his Unruh Act case to the California Supreme Court on behalf of women, men, people of color, homosexuals, Jews, etc. and got the Court to unanimously reverse the trial and appellate courts and rule discrimination victims do not have to first ask the offending business “May I please be treated the same as your women/Blacks/homosexuals/Jews etc. customers” in order to have standing to file an Unruh Act claim.
Mr. Kowal, on the other hand, apparently has never advocated for equal treatment or soical justice for Californians or anyone else.
Does Mr. Kowal somehow think such sex-based disparate pricing is okay?
I hate “kids eat free” promotions.
It’s age-based discrimination as well as discrimination against those living a child-free lifestyle.
Jaybird, I think you’re right. From the tone and text of Mr. Kowal’s article he appears crestfallen that Mr. Angelucci and the people of California through their Legislature have fought to end sex-based pricing promotions such as the innocuously-sounding but discriminately-employed “Ladies’ Nights.”
Men who are in favor of Ladies’ Night promotions are usually losers because that’s the only way they can meet women – by indirectly or indirectly paying for women to be near them because they have nothing else going for them to attract the opposite sex, so they treat women like whores instead of as equals. Hidebound thinkers like Mr. Kowal are also probably in favor of home economics being a required course for high school girls before they can graduate.
Sue
I’m in favor of Ladies Night for the same reason I’m in favor of abortion.
“It’s your establishment.”
If your position then is that they should also be able to discriminate based on race and nationality, then I at least respect your consistency. What I especially oppose is the hypocrisy and double standards. The Unruh Act forbids the discrimination, and yet it has mostly been enforced only for women but not men. That’s we we see ladies’ discounts all over the place, not just in night clubs but in car washes, hotels, restaurants, shooting ranges, sporting events and other places. I agree with Tom Leykis. They need to be sued.
Marc,
You are missing the point I made in today’s post. Discrimination in itself is no sin. The only reason we now have constitutional amendments and decisional law and civil rights statutes prohibiting certain kinds of discrimination is because as to those certain kinds of discrimination, society has shown an alarming trend at arbitrary and invidious discrimination. Arbitrary and invidious discrimination is bad. But discrimination that is not arbitrary or invidious is fine and necessary for governance. Ladies Nights are based on distinctions that are neither arbitrary nor invidious. They ought to be left alone.
Of course it’s arbitrary and invidious for a place of public accommodation to host a Ladies’ Night or Men’s Night and allow the favored sex in for free and charge the disfavored sex because (1) there’s no legal basis for such disparate treatment (therefore arbitrary), and (2) such sex-based pricing causes discontent, animosity, resentment, or envy among the sexes (therefore invidious). Just like it would be arbitrary and invidious for Michael’s arts and crafts store or a scrapbbooking store to give men free merchandise and charge women full price on a Men’s Night.
I disagree that “Ladies Nights are based on distinctions that are neither arbitrary nor invidious.” It is sex discrimination. It spreads the message that men need to pay for and subsidize women, that men “earn more” (they only earn more by working far more hours and more dangerous jobs and having far less options to leave the workforce), and it conditions men to accept larger forms of discrimination against them such as in family law, child custody, criminal sentencing, military conscription, public benefits, insurance, education, etc.
Feminists sued dry cleaners and salons when they charged women a higher fee, and they put a stop to it for the most part. Men should do the same. Double standards in the law are not ok. In Koire v. Metro Car Wash, every single member of the California Supreme Court, both conservative and liberal, held that ladies’ nights discounts spread sexist stereotypes, and they held:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal. 3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.”
http://law.justia.com/cases/california/cal3d/40/24.html
Even Findlaw’s legal commentator Joanna Grossman publicly objected to Ladies’ Nights discounts, stating: ‘Regardless of stereotypes, it is simply unfair to charge people different prices for the same product because of some immutable characteristic like gender. Most sex-specific prices disadvantage women – dry cleaning and haircuts, to give two examples – but ones that disadvantage men are unfair as well.’ (“The End of Ladies’ Night in N.J.,” Findlaw Legal Commentary, June 15, 2004, http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20040615.html .)
“I disagree that “Ladies Nights are based on distinctions that are neither arbitrary nor invidious.” It is sex discrimination.”
It’s subsidization of a desired customer demographic which would otherwise self-select out of the activity. How is that discrimination?
DensityDuck,
As I explain in my follow-up post, it is discrimination. The problem is that we’ve colored the word “discrimination” so as to carry only a negative, pernicious connotation such that we’ve become incapable of recognizing that the word also shares the root of “to discern.” In other words, just as there are forms of “bad” discrimination, there are in fact many more examples of “good” discrimination. All law is discrimination, after all.
“All law is discrimination, after all.”
Yeah, but not all law is SEX discrimination of RACE discrimination. Those are suspect classifications that have had a long history of discrimination. So, in order to end it, we make laws forbidding all of it. Period. And men have historically been discriminated against in areas such as child custody, criminal sentencing, military conscription, etc.
Sex discrimination does not have nearly as problematic a history as race discrimination; sex discrimination against men does not have nearly as problematic a history as sex discrimination against women; and whatever the merits of discrimination claims in the areas of child custody, criminal sentencing, and military conscription, none of these have anything to do with trying to attract female customers to your business.
I totally disagree Tim. Fathers have historically been denied equal parenting rights with mothers. As late as 1971, the Minnesota State Bar Association’s handbook advised lawyers and judges not to give custody to fathers. Today fathers ask for 50% custody while mothers ask for and get 80% custody, and fathers become visitors and wallets. The European Court of Human Rights recently intervened on behalf of unmarried dads in Germany who are given no custody rights. Similar laws exist in Japan, Ireland and elsewhere.
For years, the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 exempted “able-bodied males” between ages 18 and 45 from the ban on slavery and forced labor. Article 11. Although the exemption was eventually eliminated, Article 2 still exempts prisoners and soldiers (90+% male).
Male slaves are frequently ignored by human rights laws and policies.
Male slaves in China have had trouble getting their slavemasters prosecuted because only women were protected from slavery.
For years men have been in a silent health crisis. The CA Dept of Health Services recommended a men’s health office, but it never formed. There are numerous federal offices of women’s health and similar offices at every level of government, but virtually no offices of men’s health. Meanwhile, breast cancer is known as a “horde” of cancer funds. The National Cancer Institute spent about four times more on breast cancer research than prostate cancer research for decades. Men get higher penalties than women when all other factors are equal. The gender of the victim matters too. Drunk drivers receive an average of a 3-year higher sentence for killing a female than for killing a male (compared to a 2-year higher sentence for killing a white instead of a black). (“Unconventional Wisdom,” Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2000.)
And I don’t agree that there is no connection to female-only discounts. Men have long been conditioned to accept it when they’re discriminated against. That one of the reasons men don’t complain. And when they constantly see women get discounts at car washes, hotels, night clubs, etc. it sends the message that discrimination against men is ok, that the double standards are ok, that even the larger forms of it are ok, and that men should be just manning up and accepting it, which is exactly how they get men to fight wars. It’s the tip of the iceberg and it’s all part of male disposability. So yes, I fight it all the way.
The California Supreme Court in Koire v. Metro Car Wash agreed that it’s wrong, both the conservative and liberal judges did, unanimously. They said it is harmful “per se” and correctly held:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal.3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.” (Kanowitz, Women and the Law (1969) p. 4.)”
And no gender oppression is comparable in magnitude to the deaths of males in war, which includes forced conscription in to wars started by the elite and that both men and women supported at about the same rate. Over 20 million male soldiers died in WWII alone, about 500,000 of them U.S. soldiers. Historically, a large percentage of men were drafted before they were old enough to even vote. The Vietnam Memorial has 58,000 male names and 8 female names. Males throughout the world are still forced to fight wars, even at ages as young as 6 in some countries. In the U.S. males must still register for the draft by age 18, including “only sons” and even disabled men if they can move about.
76% of women and 86% of men supported the U.S. Gulf War invasion. http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-19/news/mn-171_1_times-poll
And in his report, “War and Gender,” University of Massachusetts political scientist Joshua Goldstein documents how women have actively encouraged military adventurism, both in modern and indigenous societies, and that in the face of imminent conflict, women goad their men into combat. During the American Revolutionary War, women were known to withhold sexual favors from reluctant fighters. During the American Civil War, Southern belles refused to accept suitors who did not take up arms. In World War I, British women organized the White Feather campaign in which they gave a white feather to men who refused to fight, as a sign of their unmanliness. Before the 1973 coup in Chile, women threw corn at soldiers to taunt them as “chickens.” – In the Rwanda genocide, Hutu women played a major role in killing Tutsi men:
“Women of every social category took part in the killings. … Some women killed with their own hands. … Women and girls in their teens joined the crowds that surrounded churches, hospitals and other places of refuge. Wielding machetes and nail-studded clubs, they excelled as “cheerleaders” of the genocide, ululating the killers into action.” African Rights report, Rwanda – Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers, August 1995.) http://www.gendercide.org/case_rwanda.html
As Warren Farrell, Ph.D. put it, “Forcing only men to register for the draft in case the country goes to war is just as sexist as forcing women to register to get pregnant in case the country needs more babies.” Warren Farrell, Ph.D., “The Myth of Male Power.”
It’s discrimination because it’s charging one sex a higher fee than the other. The motive doesn’t matter. If I gave whites a discount in order to bring more whites into my store, that would be discrimination. Period. When salons and dry cleaners gave men a discount to get more men, women’s groups sued them for discrimination. That’s discrimination too. The motive has nothing to do with whether the discrimination is taking place. Discrimination is about the differential treatment, period.
But why can’t we say that the Ladies’ Night activity was an attempt to correct the discrimination experienced by the female demographic? Why can’t we say that Ladies’ Night was a form of affirmative action?
Or are you going to claim that you think affirmative action is a bad idea, too?
How is it “correcting” anything to give women a discount at a night club? What discrimination are women facing at nightclubs?
If you’re going to say it’s because men “earn more,” that a load of garbage. The “pay gap” is only a snapshot of average yearly full-time incomes. It does not account for overtime (about 90% male), type of work, or other factors. It only exists because women have more options than men to go in and out of the workplace or work part time, and because men work more hours at high-stress jobs they hate with longer commutes, less flexibility, more physical risk, etc. just to be breadwinners and feed their families, only to die younger and get bashed for “earning more.”
That is why 57% of female graduates of Stanford and Harvard left the workforce within 15 years of entry into the workforce. http: //edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/03/15/optout.revolution/
That’s why never-married childless women earn more than their male counterparts. And women between ages 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men’s wages. w w w .nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Meanwhile, female CEOs outearned men in 2009. h t tp://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10630664
And female U.S. corporate directors out-earn men: study
w w w.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0752118220071107?feedType=R
And then there’s the expectation gap. Research shows women still seek men who earn more than they do. w w w.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8237298/What-women-really-want-to-marry-a-rich-man.html
The U.S. Department of Labor funded a study that found the pay gap is most likely due to life choices rather than discrimination.
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
In “Why Men Earn More,” Warren Farrell, Ph.D. examined 25 career/life choices men and women make (hours, commute times, etc.) that lead to men earning more and women having more balanced lives, and that showed how men in surveys prioritize money while women prioritize flexibility, shorter hours, shorter commutes, less physical risk and other factors conducive to their choice to be primary parents, an option men still largely don’t have. That is why never-married childless women outearn their male counterparts, and female corporate directors now outearn their male counterparts.
Does this mean you are also okay with places of public accommodation such as a nightclub, restaurant, movie theatre, or major league sports franchise hosting a “Caucasian Night” or “Heterosexual Night” where, e.g., Whites and Heterosexuals get free drinks, food, or admission but the “Niggers” and “Queers,” respectively, have to pay full price?
Sue,
You are describing invidious discrimination, which as I said before is problematic. If you were to cast the hypo to match the Ladies’ Night model, then a bar that had a lot of straight white customers but wanted more diversity should be able to offer promotions to, say, gay and black people.
And so are you saying it would okay (legal) for a gay bar in Hillcrest, the gay part of San Diego, or in the Castro District in San Francisco, in order to increase diversity of their clientele, to host a Heterosexual Night every night where heterosexual customers get free drinks and all the gay and lesbians have to pay full price for their drinks? Or do you think it would okay (legal) to have Heterosexual Night one or two nights a week instead of all seven?
Or, if Aeromexico wanted to increase the diversity of the passengers on its flights out of LAX, you (Tim Kowal) are saying it would okay (legal) for Aeromexico to allow only Caucasian passengers to sit in the front of the plane – maybe even give them free first-class treatment – and require all Hispanic passengers to sit in the back of the plane?
Sue,
Obviously, the California Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Unruh Act makes this illegal, as I explained here.
Also obvious is the fact that the questions are much easier if you’re talking about one night a week versus an everyday policy. Judging from the fact that you’ve not substantively responded to my posts or comments and have instead been fingering the trigger of the “bigot” gun, I’m not inclined to engage your hypothetical further.
Tim,
I believe I have substantively responded to (1) your original post (article) where you seemingly pooh-pooh Mr. Angelucci’s (and Mr. Koire, and Mr. ___ – because there have been many similarly successful lawsuits) and the State of California’s fight to stop businesses from charging patrons different prices based on teh patrons’ sex. See the DFEH’s new publication solely addressing Ladies’ Nights at: http://www.dfeh.ca.gov/res/docs/Publications/UnruhActBrochure.pdf and (2) your subsequent post arguing that businesses can discriminate against one group of people to encourage the patronage of another group who have dissimilar personal characteristics. And to my response to your second post, you seem to think its okay for a business to host a Men’s Night, Caucasian Night, or Heterosexual Night once or a few times a week to encourage more male, white, or heterosexual customers to patronize a business, but not every night of the week. You and I (and fortunately the people of the State of California) disagree on this, and reasonable minds can disagree.
I also support the right of call girls to say “No Irish Need Apply”.
“It’s your establishment.”
Now, of course, I’d hope that such establishments would be ineligible for public subsidy and think that such would be enshrined in law and thus make sure that our fine public defenders, police officers, prosecutors, and judges only utilize the services of call girls who don’t discriminate on the basis of race and, if there’s a convention in town or something, the law enforcement in charge of rounding up girls for the convention keep discrimination law in mind.
Sue Nami: That’s a straw man argument, and you know it. Those practices (long outlawed since the ’60s) are active discriminations; “you can’t come in because you’re (x)”.
Giving a certain class a discount is the business’s business. Think “senior discount”. Is that one of the execrable practices your side would outlaw?
“Men who are in favor of Ladies’ Night promotions are usually losers because that’s the only way they can meet women …”
Another vacuous argument. If that were the case, no women would ever show up on those nights.
“… are also probably in favor of home economics …”
Good grief – a whole forest of straw men.
Was Lin a Jack-in-the-Box case? That’s what I seem to recall. I may have been involved in the early stages of the case but I don’t remember much of it. Anyway, I disagree that it’s a small trivial thing when a person in a wheelchair can’t see in the mirror because it’s too high, or can’t reach the toilet seat covers, or gets burned by exposed pipes, etc. The law is there for a good reason, and obviously it’s not being enforced much. And when I did these cases I heard “we were about to fix that” so many times. All it would have takeb was to admit fault early and fix the barrier to reach a low settlement with me. And most of them did. Some, on the other hand, turned into one of those oh-look-at-me-I’m-gonna-fight-these-crooks-and-their-lawyers. Those types, in my humble opinion, deserve to be litigated all the way to the end. That’s what I did with two of them in Orange County who had no ramps. They could have settled so low, instead they took it to trial, lost, and were hit with statutory penalties and attorney fees. Some of those types do win, but ultimately the goal of removing the barriers on a widespread basis is still achieved as people hear about the lawsuits through media etc.
If you’re concerned enough to advocate against this law, why don’t you also advocate to get the Attorney General to inspect businesses and send warning letters to the non-compliant ones? We have done that with regard to both the disability discrimination and the gender discrimination. But no, it looks like the lawsuits are what it will take.
You just got me fired up to do some more of them. I miss those days.
“This bill would make it a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act to adopt or enforce a policy that requires, limits, or prohibits the use of any language in or with a business establishment, unless the policy is justified by a business necessity…”
Obviously the bill’s intent is to protect non English speaking or English as a second language speaking workers. If it were intended for fluent English speakers (especially fluent English speaking males born in the United States) this bill would never have been introduced let along passed.
Fortunately, regardless of intent, the Unruh Act protects all of us, even English speaking guys born in Jersey if they are in California.
While I do not agree with this modification to the Unruh Act, I firmly believe protections offered through the Unruh Act extend to all of us.
If it were not for attorneys like Marc Angelucci or organizations like the National Coalition For Men, that guy from Jersey and other men in California would have few if anyone to stand tall for their civil rights.
Tim I believe you are a racist and a sexist. You must belong to some white supremist group since you don’t believe men and women deserve equal treatment.
Mr. Kowal,
My questions for you are:
1. How would you suggest changing the current landscape of businesses either violating the ADA and or the Unruh Act without some monitory form of penalty?
2. If you were handicapped or had a close family member who was, would your opinion change on the situation?
3. It is 2011, and businesses are still discriminating!! Maybe the fines and penalty are not harsh enough? When you say small business or Mom & Pop shops, Jack in the Box and many of the others sued for ADA and Unruh violations, are not small shops, but rather businesses that would rather discriminate to save money till they get caught.
I agree with Angelucci’s response in his last reply – final paragraph, “why don’t you also advocate to get the Attorney General to inspect businesses and send warning letters to the non-compliant ones”. Since you point out the cottage industry (currently do the job of policing) as a bad thing, why don’t you create an alternative? The lack of effort to enforce these violations by local city and government, leaves it up to the public to create the change and the 4k is a great incentive.
Mr. Kowal have you come up with an alternative yet?
Allan,
1) As I mentioned in my previous comment, the court of appeal’s Gunther v. Lin rule was well reasoned and would appropriately advance the Act’s policy objectives while curtailing abuses. I never said there should be no monetary recovery. I have worked on lawsuits in the public interest and recovered under the private attorney general statute, so I certainly am not against the structure per se.
2) It would not change my views, though it would like cause me to think more about the issues, and that probably would lead me to develop and refine my view. Also, reading and responding to comments like yours does that, too! I always welcome that opportunity.
3) It’s my understanding that the Jack in the Box in the Gunther case was a franchise, so not a “big business.” And as I said in my reply to Density Duck above, I’m talking about hyper technical unintentional violations here, not ALL violations of the ADA or Unruh.
Although I haven’t re-read the decision, as I recall the primary effect Gunther v. Lin had was that if a plaintiff was suing for ADA violations that were not intended to discriminate (like failure to have a ramp or insulate the pipes under a sink), the plaintiff had to use a different statute that has a $1k penalty rather than the one that has a $4k penalty. As I recall, the problem I had with it was so much the result but judicial activist it was. I recall reading it and thinking how incredibly outcome-driven it was, rather than law-based. You could see how the judges manipulated the law to get their desired result. It was so bad that the federal courts had to tell the California Supreme Court to review it, something I’ve never seen happen before or since. The California Supreme Court previously refused to review it until the federal courts told them to. The federal courts called it “flawed from the start.” Then when the California Supreme Court reviewed it they recognized it was flawed and they overturned it.
It’s one thing to say you like the outcome, but it’s another thing to say the legal reasoning was accurate. It wasn’t.
I disagree that “Ladies Nights are based on distinctions that are neither arbitrary nor invidious.” It is sex discrimination. It spreads the message that men need to pay for and subsidize women, that men “earn more” (they only earn more by working far more hours and more dangerous jobs and having far less options to leave the workforce), and it conditions men to accept larger forms of discrimination against them such as in family law, child custody, criminal sentencing, military conscription, public benefits, insurance, education, etc.
Feminists sued dry cleaners and salons when they charged women a higher fee, and they put a stop to it for the most part. Men should do the same. Double standards in the law are not ok. In Koire v. Metro Car Wash, every single member of the California Supreme Court, both conservative and liberal, held that ladies’ nights discounts spread sexist stereotypes, and they held:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal. 3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.”
http://law.justia.com/cases/california/cal3d/40/24.html
Even Findlaw’s legal commentator Joanna Grossman publicly objected to Ladies’ Nights discounts, stating: ‘Regardless of stereotypes, it is simply unfair to charge people different prices for the same product because of some immutable characteristic like gender. Most sex-specific prices disadvantage women – dry cleaning and haircuts, to give two examples – but ones that disadvantage men are unfair as well.’ (“The End of Ladies’ Night in N.J.,” Findlaw Legal Commentary, June 15, 2004, http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20040615.html .)
Thanks! I’ll look at it SN.
There is a great law review article that sets forth all that is legally and morally wrong with Ladies’ Night sex-based promotions, which should be required reading for anyone debating this subject. The cite is
19 S. CAL. REV. L. & SOCIAL JUSTICE 479
2010 University of Southern California
Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice
Summer, 2010
NOTE: “GIRLS GET IN FREE”: A LEGAL ANALYSIS OF THE GENDER-BASED DOOR ENTRY POLICIES
NAME: Mark Allan Herzberg
Obviously, Tim Kowal is a coward because he deletes comments he doesn’t like because he believes it is okay to discriminate. Any form of discrimination is wrong and their needs to be some type of financial punishment to prevent discrimination. I don’t believe $4000 is enough so many places are gaming the system or telling people verbally they offer a deal to discriminate. Many of these are big corporations that know they are intentionally discriminating and have been warned several times in the past and you call it just a technical mistake.
Maybe you hide a hood in your closet someplace.
Marina,
When did I ever delete any comment? I have grown accustomed to emotional rants like yours, but blatant falsehoods still get my attention.
Justify your statement, madam.
Tim,
I am sorry you are using sexist terminology calling my comment an “emotional rant” and your post was a rant insulting people of color and disabilities. You are probably one of those white male hypocrites that will hire illegals to save a buck and then complain that illegals get free health care, welfare, and housing from the state. I state nothing but the truth my comment was post yesturday and today it was gone so I thought it was hypocritical of you to exercise you free speech but then silence commentors. I am an immigrant that came here and learned English. This country is such a wealthy country the least Americans should do is give to new immigrants.
ZZMike,
Yes you are going to find some cases were the ADA has been abusive toward businesses, but you can find extreme abuses in all areas of everything, especially law. I don’t agree with these extreme cases that use ADA laws in ways to hurt businesses, but that’s the cost of having the law.
1. Since you are pointing out problems with the current system, what is the alternative to changing the current landscape of some businesses not following the ADA?
2. If you or your close family were handicapped would you see these lawsuites more favorably?
3. America is the great place that it is because businesses/ the public have standards that WE have collectively agreed upon and passed into law. If we did not have the ADA, what would make us different from a so called less developed country?
Again I hate abuse, but I like standards. How we get to standards is always going to be a debate!
Marc Keep up the good work!
“… what is the alternative to changing the current landscape of some businesses not following the ADA?”
Very simple: send the “offending” establishment a 30-day notice to comply, or to show cause why 30 days is not sufficient. Then proceed accordingly.
If indeed the goal is to “lower the barrier” and not “line the pocket”, there should be no objection.
(I should point out right away that I’m not a lawyer, nor have I studied the larger aspects of the situation.)
“2. If you or your close family were handicapped would you see these lawsuites more favorably?”
Probably not. I detest extortion in all its forms. I can’t run the Boston Marathon, but I’m not about to sue that group to “lower the barrier” so that I can.
“…because businesses/ the public have standards that WE have collectively agreed upon and passed into law.”
In that I agree. Therefore, refer to my #1 and put the shysters out of business. Let legitimate lawyers like Mr Kowal and Marc A (and others) run a fair ship.
In some cases, when I did these lawsuits, we did send warning letters. And we have also sent warning letters regarding the female discounts (again, some are on the website of http://www.ncfm.org) That sometimes solves the problem in that particular business. But it doesn’t solve the widespread nature of the problem. Even if we sent the warning letters routinely, it still does little because when businesses know they’ll get a warning letter first, they don’t do anything until the letter comes. That’s like OSHA having to warn construction sites before inspecting. They won’t care until the letter comes. What does solve the widespread problem (absent the Attorney General doing anything serious about it) is when you start suing, then the community hears about the lawsuits and the media covers it. Then all of a sudden they start caring, and the local chambers of commerce start warning the businesses.
So, yeah, warning letters are good in some cases, especially very small businesses, but without the lawsuits the problem simply does not change. The better solution would be to have the Attorney General get active, but so far they do not.
To suggest “if you don’t like the female-only discounts then don’t go there” is kind of like saying to women if you don’t like the higher price for women at the salon or dry cleaner then don’t go there, or to blacks if you don’t like the discounts for white people don’t go there, etc. etc. When it’s a matter of gender or race discrimination, people should actively fight it. That’s what Dennise Koire did. He went to the car washes and night clubs to see if the discrimination would occur. And when it did, he sued. Civil rights groups like the Fair Housing Institute and fair employment groups have long organized civil rights testers for that very purpose.
For some reason I’m getting comments in the email notices that aren’t showing up here when I look for them, and some of my later comments are either deleted or not posting, I’m not sure why. But anyway, a quick repy to ZZMike’s comments that don’t show here for some reason:
ZZMike said: “I notice that the so-called “lawyers” rarely hit big businesses – who are ready, willing and able to fight these extortionists in court.”
Not true. You should do your research, perhaps even look at the activities page of the Nationial Coalition For Men http://www.ncfm.org.
Just as an example, we sued Club Med for giving free flights only to women but not men. They had all their biggy lawyers and still lost. I sued the State of California for discriminating against male victims of domestic violence, taking on the State Attorney General, and I still won and got the discriminatory statute declared unconstutitional. San Francisco Chronicle, “Appeals Court Decision Supports Battered Men” (10/16/08)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/15/BA3S13HOLS.DTL
Sacramento Bee, “Court: End Domestic Violence Program Discrimination” (10/16/08)
http://www.sacbee.com/latest/story/1319004.html
I also sued the Century Supper Club, a large night club in Century City, which was in no way a small business, for not only for charging men a higher fee but also for targetting only males for security pat-downs. Their attorneys fought it all the way to the CA Supreme Court, though they lost.
In alot of other cases, we have just given warnings in writing beforehand, such as when the San Diego YWCA was charging boys more than girls to skateboard, or what certain sporting events charged men but didn’t charge women. Again, some of this is on the NCFM website. http://www.ncfm.org
No, we don’t aways win. But we keep going whether we win or lose. That’s how changes are being made, since the Attorney General does nothing about it.
ZZMike also said: “The very fact that he settles out of court proves that he has no interest in “helping the handicapped”. He’s after the Big Bucks.”
Again, nonsense. Anytime I settled with someone it was mandatory that they changed their discriminatory policy or removed the barriers. Those who were willing to do that early on got off with a very reasonable settlement. The puff-up-talk-tough types were the ones I would take all the way to trial. Some won, some didn’t, but it always created change when the media told the story. That’s ultimately the only thing making businesses remove their barriers.
I’ve been a men’s rights activist for over 10 years and used to do mental health disability law for nonprofits, and I’ll always support these suits as long as small businesses are given a chance to settle low if they remove their barriers early on.
FYI, some of the comments won’t appear immediately if, for instance, they have several hyperlinks (I think more than two triggers automatic moderation). I can usually “approve” them on my Blackberry right away — I’ve never “disapproved” any comment that wasn’t actual spam. At any rate, ZZMike’s comment is here.
Let me know if you have any other trouble with the comments — I have gotten a couple reports that the commenting system on the site seems buggy and that comments don’t appear for some other reason.
Thanks.
Marc,
I’d be interested to know more about your work in the area of family law, as I’m willing to believe there is need for reform there, particularly in California.
Speaking from a policy point of view for the moment, really, what’s the harm in Ladies’ Night? Is the principle objection that it is a “symptom” of what you believe to be a larger problem?
I teach family law at Pasadena City College (paralegal program) and I did family law for the Men’s Legal Center in San Diego. I still do their appeals. The two areas I’ve done most reform work on are:
1. Paternity Fraud (men being forced to pay for kids whom DNA proves are not their kids). On behalf of the National Coalition For Men (NCFM) which I’m VP of, I helped change the law in CA to give men more time to challenge incorrect judgments, organized rallies outside courthouses and county buildings, took on high profile paternity fraud cases, appeared on Dr. Phil and Donahue and debated Gloria Alred, and more. There is still alot of work to do.
2. Male victims of domestic violence. I have done too much to list. The main thing was to sue the state of Califronia, representing 4 male victims and the daughter of one of them, who were denied treatment at state-funded services. After a 5 year battle the appellate court held the Health & Safety Code statute that denied male DV victims equal treatment was unconstitutional. There is still much more to do and I’m still working on the enforcement of the new law. I’ve published op eds and LTEs in tons of publications on the topic too, plus much more.
That’s in a nutshell.
I’ve explained the harm of female-only discounts many times. It conditions men to accept the discrimination even in larger forms, it sends the message that the double standards and discrimination against me is somehow “harmless,” it sends a false message that men have everything and are advantaged and so they should pay for women and should just man up when they’re discriminated against. And it’s discriminatory. Period. The CA Supreme Court held that it’s harmful to society per se, and held:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal.3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.” (Kanowitz, Women and the Law (1969) p. 4.)”
http://www.lawlink.com/research/caselevel3/8829
I also have had recent posts disappear from this page (and from other pages on this site.)
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve forwarded the message along. Again, to be clear, I’ve never deleted of declined to “approve” a comment on this or any blog. If ever that occasion arises, I will so indicate.
Thanks again.
I can see them now–thanks!
I totally disagree Tim. Totally.
Fathers have historically been denied equal parenting rights with mothers. As late as 1971, the Minnesota State Bar Association’s handbook advised lawyers and judges not to give custody to fathers. Today fathers ask for 50% custody while mothers ask for and get 80% custody, and fathers become visitors and wallets. The European Court of Human Rights recently intervened on behalf of unmarried dads in Germany who are given no custody rights. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8395456.stm
Similar laws exist in Japan, Ireland and elsewhere.
For years, the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 exempted “able-bodied males” between ages 18 and 45 from the ban on slavery and forced labor. Article 11 at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C029
Although the exemption was eventually eliminated, Article 2 still exempts prisoners and soldiers (90+% male).
Male slaves are frequently ignored by human rights laws and policies.
Male slaves in China have had trouble getting their slavemasters prosecuted because only women were protected from slavery. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-06/15/content_895414.htm
For years men have been in a silent health crisis. The CA Dept of Health Services recommended a men’s health office, but it never formed.
There are numerous federal offices of women’s health and similar offices at every level of government, but virtually no offices of men’s health. Meanwhile, breast cancer is known as a “horde” of cancer funds. The National Cancer Institute spent about four times more on breast cancer research than prostate cancer research for decades. Men get higher penalties than women when all other factors are equal. The gender of the victim matters too. Drunk drivers receive an average of a 3-year higher sentence for killing a female than for killing a male (compared to a 2-year higher sentence for killing a white instead of a black). (“Unconventional Wisdom,” Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2000.)
And I don’t agree that there is no connection to female-only discounts. Men have long been conditioned to accept it when they’re discriminated against. That one of the reasons men don’t complain. And when they constantly see women get discounts at car washes, hotels, night clubs, etc. it sends the message that discrimination against men is ok, that the double standards are ok, that even the larger forms of it are ok, and that men should be just manning up and accepting it, which is exactly how they get men to fight wars. It’s the tip of the iceberg and it’s all part of male disposability. So yes, I fight it all the way.
The California Supreme Court in Koire v. Metro Car Wash agreed that it’s wrong, both the conservative and liberal judges did, unanimously. They said it is harmful “per se” and correctly held:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal.3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.” (Kanowitz, Women and the Law (1969) p. 4.)”
http://www.lawlink.com/research/caselevel3/8829
And no gender oppression is comparable in magnitude to the deaths of males in war, which includes forced conscription in to wars started by the elite and that both men and women supported at about the same rate. Over 20 million male soldiers died in WWII alone, about 500,000 of them U.S. soldiers. Historically, a large percentage of men were drafted before they were old enough to even vote. The Vietnam Memorial has 58,000 male names and 8 female names. Males throughout the world are still forced to fight wars, even at ages as young as 6 in some countries. In the U.S. males must still register for the draft by age 18, including “only sons” and even disabled men if they can move about.
76% of women and 86% of men supported the U.S. Gulf War invasion. http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-19/news/mn-171_1_times-poll
And in his report, “War and Gender,” University of Massachusetts political scientist Joshua Goldstein documents how women have actively encouraged military adventurism, both in modern and indigenous societies, and that in the face of imminent conflict, women goad their men into combat. During the American Revolutionary War, women were known to withhold sexual favors from reluctant fighters. During the American Civil War, Southern belles refused to accept suitors who did not take up arms. In World War I, British women organized the White Feather campaign in which they gave a white feather to men who refused to fight, as a sign of their unmanliness. Before the 1973 coup in Chile, women threw corn at soldiers to taunt them as “chickens.” – In the Rwanda genocide, Hutu women played a major role in killing Tutsi men:
“Women of every social category took part in the killings. … Some women killed with their own hands. … Women and girls in their teens joined the crowds that surrounded churches, hospitals and other places of refuge. Wielding machetes and nail-studded clubs, they excelled as “cheerleaders” of the genocide, ululating the killers into action.” African Rights report, Rwanda – Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers, August 1995.) http://www.gendercide.org/case_rwanda.html
As Warren Farrell, Ph.D. put it, “Forcing only men to register for the draft in case the country goes to war is just as sexist as forcing women to register to get pregnant in case the country needs more babies.” Warren Farrell, Ph.D., “The Myth of Male Power.”
I’m beginning to think you actually believe this has anything to do with Ladies’ Nights.
Tim, if that’s irrelevant, then why did you argue: “sex discrimination against men does not have nearly as problematic a history as sex discrimination against women.”
If your argument about historical sex discrimination against men is relevant, why isn’t my reply relevant?
Anyway, I’ve explained already why they’re connected. It’s all sex discrimination against men in different forms, and the smaller ones condition men and society to accept the bigger ones. The California Supreme Court unanimously said the same thing, didn’t they, when they said both men and women face sexual stereotypes.
I’ll leave it at that since I’ve already said it in detail.
Again, objection overruled.
Marc,
None of this data about men dying in wars establishes a history of discrimination against men. How could it? During most of history, and even today to an extent, men have overwhelmingly controlled the levers of power. If men were sent to die in wars, it is not because of some favor toward women and animus toward men. I would not expect that, were I to find some alarming statistics about the number of electricians who died in past wars, I could convince you of the existence of a general animus against electricians such as to justify a crusade to eliminate all laws regulating electric power.
Besides, even if it were true that the entire world harbors animus toward men, it does not explain why Ladies’ Nights reflect such an animus, as half the point of Ladies’ Night is to establish a favorable balance of patrons for the benefit of all. That is, even men—no, particularlymen—have an interest in promoting the attendance of women in bars and other social establishments.
Wow, suddenly it’s relevant again, huh? I thought a minute ago all this was irrelevant. Ok good, we’re back on track.
Men dying in wars has nothing to do with discrimination against men? You mean governments didn’t force only males to fight the wars? Well, yes they did, and many still do. That’s called discrimination.
“men have overwhelmingly controlled the levers of power.”
Oh really? Even the men who were forced to fight? They had “levers of power”? I disagree. The elite had the power, not the men who were forced to fight.
” If men were sent to die in wars, it is not because of some favor toward women and animus toward men.”
I see. So animus toward the targetted class is the only thing that makes it not ok? How about if I decide to gives white people a discount to get more of them into my store. It’s not animus against blacks. Does that make it ok? When certain cultures target girls for genital cutting, that has nothing to do with animus toward girls, but does that make it ok? No it doesn’t. Having no animus toward the targetted group does not make discrimination ok at all.
“I would not expect that, were I to find some alarming statistics about the number of electricians who died in past wars, I could convince you of the existence of a general animus against electricians such as to justify a crusade to eliminate all laws regulating electric power.”
Well Tim, if there were a law that said electicians had to fight the wars for us, like the laws did for men, I think that would be considered discriminatory, regardless of whether there is an animus toward electricians.
“Besides, even if it were true that the entire world harbors animus toward men, it does not explain why Ladies’ Nights reflect such an animus, as half the point of Ladies’ Night is to establish a favorable balance of patrons for the benefit of all.”
As I have said, it isn’t about “animus.” It’s about discrimination. I combat sex discrimination against men whether it’s motivated by “animus” or other things. British Airways had a policy of not letting men sit next to unaccompanied kids. That wasn’t about “animus” towad men. But it was discriminatory and stigmatizing and sexist. So we fought it. “Animus” has little to do with it.
“That is, even men—no, particularlymen—have an interest in promoting the attendance of women in bars and other social establishments.”
Yeah I’ve heard that one before. Interesting, because if the goal is ultimately to bring in more men, then it doesn’t change the ratio in the long run does it? The more it serves it’s purpose of bringing more men to pay for things, the less the ratio is changed because all it does is bring more of both sexes. Even if it did improve the ratio that doesn’t make the sex discrimination ok. The stereotypes that it spread are still there (men must pay for women, men “earn more,” men should accept discrimination). And it isn’t just night clubs that do it. Car washes, hotels, etc. do it to, and that’s not to correct any “ratio.” The ratio argument doesn’t fly.
What kind of logic is this: “. . . half the point of Ladies’ Night is to establish a favorable balance of patrons for the benefit of all. That is, even men—no, particularlymen—have an interest in promoting the attendance of women in bars and other social establishments.”?
While the goal may be a noble one, the means is appalling. One could make a similarly absurd argument in favor of maintaining high property value – an admirable goal, by not allowing anymore blacks to buy homes in a subdivision, supported by some blacks, those who own tracts of land in the subdivision and who have an interest in promoting high property values by prohibiting blacks from living in the subdivision.
If elite men send non-elite men to die in wars, then by the simple process of cancelation of like terms, we find that if there is some improper discriminatory motive happening, it is “elite versus non-elite.”
The reason we presume that discrimination of racial minorities is based on animus and thus unlawful unless meeting “strict scrutiny” requirements is the same reason we presume that discrimination of electricians is not based on animus and thus not subject to stringent judicial review: because our checkered history as a nation justifies such a presumption as to the former but not as to the latter. In the absence of such exceptional circumstances, the democratic process and private choices should be upheld irrespective of the wishes of factions seeking to achieve outlier policy objectives. Otherwise, like I said above, all laws are put on the chopping block.
I’ll just let that float out there on its own.
Tim,
This Angelucci guy is tearing you up and really making you look bad. I think you’ve delved into a topic, “Ladies’ Night,” which you don’t know the law, the facts, the figures, or the social consequences of sex-based promotions favored by hidebound thinkers like yourself. You may want to give it up, before you get as bloodied as that Deborah La Fetra and Tim Sandefur did at the California Supreme Court when their amicus arguments got completely rejected by the Court. I’d be embarassed to cite anything by Deborah La Fetra and Tim Sandefur if arguing in support of sex-based pricing such as Ladies’ Night promotions.
No doubt Mr. Angelucci’s arguments will capture the imagination of those who are able to see the parallels between male slaves in China and ladies’ night discounts in Orange County.
Wow Tim, even you pretend you didn’t make the following argument? “Sex discrimination does not have nearly as problematic a history as race discrimination; sex discrimination against men does not have nearly as problematic a history as sex discrimination against women.”
I didn’t see you mention Orange County. And Density Duck didn’t object to your argument as irrelevant. Go figure.
Of course, sex discrimination is a global issue. But that’s fine if you want to It’s all over, not just Orange County. For that matter then, I’ll remove the part about China, Japan, Germany, etc., and we’ll stick with Orange County – including the fathers being denied equal treatment, convicts getting higher sentences for being male, males being denied equal public benefits because they’re male, etc.
Again, objection overruled.
Wow Tim, even you pretend you didn’t make the following argument?
“Sex discrimination does not have nearly as problematic a history as race discrimination; sex discrimination against men does not have nearly as problematic a history as sex discrimination against women.”
I didn’t see you mention Orange County. And Density Duck didn’t object to your argument as irrelevant.
Of course, sex discrimination is a global issue. But that’s fine if you want to limit it to Orange County. Then I’ll remove the part about China, Japan, Germany, etc., and we’ll stick with Orange County – including the fathers being denied equal treatment, convicts getting higher sentences for being male, males being denied equal public benefits because they’re male, etc.
Again, objection overruled.
“…we’ll stick with Orange County – including the fathers being denied equal treatment, convicts getting higher sentences for being male, males being denied equal public benefits because they’re male, etc.”
Fine, if you like, let’s stick with that. So, go ahead: How do these relate to Ladies’ Nights?
“How do these relate to Ladies’ Nights?”
I’ve said it many times Tim. It’s sex discrimination against men, and the Ladies’ Nights or other types of female discounts send the message that treating men unequally is ok. And as the California Supreme Court beautifully put it, specifically when saying Ladies’ Nights discounts are not ok:
“Men and women alike suffer from the stereotypes perpetrated by sex-based differential treatment. (See Kanowitz, “Benign” Sex Discrimination: Its Troubles and Their Cure (1980) 31 Hastings L.J. 1379, 1394; Comment, Equal Rights Provisions: The Experience Under State Constitutions (1977) 65 Cal.L.Rev. 1086, 1106-1107.) When the law “emphasizes irrelevant differences between men and women[,] [it] cannot help influencing the content and the tone of the social, as well as the legal, relations between the sexes. … As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected [40 Cal.3d 35] and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.” (Kanowitz, Women and the Law (1969) p. 4.)”
http://www.lawlink.com/research/caselevel3/8829
Thank you, California Supreme Court, for seeing the connection that Mr. Kowal et al. don’t see.
These other examples of a double standard and treating men as second class citizens, inferior to women with inferior rights, are directly related to Ladies Nights where there is a double standard and men are treated as second class citizens, inferior to women with inferior rights, when men are charged more than women and they, according to you Tim, should not have standing to sue for an Unruh Act or Gender Tax Repeal Act violation like women would have standing to sue if they were charged a higher price than men for the same goods or services.
Just like a “Men’s Night” wherein women were charged more than men would be related to other areas in society where women get favorable treatment over men based solely on their sex, e.g., if female convicts got longer sentences for being female, denied equal public benefits because they’re female, etc. You have to have the cajones or fallopians to stand up and say “No More!” to any form of discrimination because to sit idly by and suck it up only encourages or tacitly approving all forms of sex discrimination.
Unisex restrooms only! Say no to “any form of discrimination”! Because “to sit idly by and suck it up only encourages or tacitly approv[es] all forms of sex discrimination”!
Furthermore, after the California Supreme Court thoroughly and unanimously rejected the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Deborah La Fetra and Tim Sandefur’s arguments in favor of Ladies’ Night in their amicus brief filed in the Angelucci case, and I think calling these attorneys’ arguments “absurd” and “startling” (unprecedented language in a California Supreme Court opinion – see pg. 169 of the opinion), the case was remanded to the trial court, where after a hugely successful trial, the trial court recognized Mr. Angelucci and his other equal rights champions as acting as “civil rights testers” at all times.
Somehow there was no “reply” line on this one so I’ll reply here. Tim said: “Unisex restrooms only! Say no to “any form of discrimination”!
Bad analogy, because unisex restrooms aren’t treating one sex unequally. If men’s restrooms were much smaller, or women’s restrooms were not kept clean, that would be treating the sexes unequally.
That sounds like a “separate but equal” argument.
You’re right, except “separate but equal” was NOT equal for minorities and it carried a stigma with it, which is not true for separate restrooms. (Not always, of course, and some feminist groups are arguing that women’s restrooms need more stalls because women have to wait in line longer; meanwhile alot of men’s restrooms don’t have mirros and don’t have the same privacy, such as being visible when the door opens or not having doors on stalls. That is unequal treatment, and I don’t oppose lawsuits on those issues).
I’ve heard rumors about women’s bathrooms.
They get couches.
ZZMike,
1. Thanks for volunteering to send all the businesses with violations, a 30 day notices to fix all of their ADA violations.
When are you going to start??
You have a large task before you!
2. You response to my question: “If you or your close family were handicapped would you see these lawsuits more favorably?” is “Probably not. I detest extortion in all its forms.”
A – “Probably” is a yes in your case. If you were handicapped you would, so just say it…
B – If you call following the law or getting fined extortion, then either change the law or start your volunteering campaign and start sending out 30 day notices right away. You can call it pro-bono and right it off.
C – Move to another country were ADA does not exist and see what you get!
Allan C: “You have a large task before you!”
I think I’ll decline the invitation. What I meant, of course, that the courts – local courts – would be the ones to send out these notices. They’d be told of the “infractions” by whoever was willing to take the time, do the civic duty – of telling the court about it.
“A – “Probably” is a yes in your case. If you were handicapped you would, so just say it…”
I wouldn’t go around to strip malls all over the county – as at least one person did in Southern California (though I heard the courts finally cracked down and told him to stop with the frivolous suits) – trying to find fine-print “violations”, so I could hammer someone.
I think I’ve been leaving out a significant part of how I feel about these cases: the notion of intent. A small business has not just one mountain of red tape to try to cut through in order to get started (and places like California are working day and night to add to those mountains (but that’s another thread)). I seriously doubt anyone designs his place thinking “let’s see, how can we make it harder for disabled people to get in”. Maybe some do (though I doubt it), and those should get an appropriate punishment. But the guy who’s doing his best just to stay above water, who may not have read the 12,356 pages of the ADA, doesn’t deserve to get hit with fines out of the blue (because, indeed, the first they hear of it is when the letter arrives).
“B – If you call following the law or getting fined extortion, …”
Say what you will, the guy who goes around filing 121 suits in 36 months is not interested in the ADA – he’s interested in collecting money.
And if “the law is the law”, then I’ll side with Dickens in his observation on the law.
“You can call it pro-bono and right it off.”
I’ll chalk that one off to overly-fast typing.
My bottom line is this: if a business is unintentionally breaking some obscure part of a law (and I consider legislating the exact height of a mirror to be “an obscure part”), then the appropriate solution is to sit down with the owner and discuss remedies (including, but not limited to, exactly how the offended person was harmed), not to go in with both barrels blazing and say, in effect, “you owe me $4000 – now pay up or I’ll sue you and it’ll end up costing you a lot more”.
“C – Move to another country were ADA does not exist and see what you get!”
I feared it might end up on that note. “If you don’t like this prison, go fins another one.”
I can agree on what the “best solution” would be, as I never thought lawsuits were the “best solution.” But without the AG or another government entity doing anything, I think the lawsuits are the only thing that has worked. So let’s get the AG to start enforcing the ADA with warnings. It can’t be that hard for them. They enforce lots of other laws. They and the counties waste time cracking down on medical marijuana users who aren’t hurting anyone while letting the lack of ramps and other ADA violations sit untouched for decades. They waste a bunch of money on radical feminist commissions that lie to the public about gender issues. That money could be used to enforce the ADA. Maybe I’ll call them again. I’ll tell them they have 5 or maybe 10 years to start doing something and if they don’t then I’ll start doing ADA lawsuits again and maybe I’ll sue the state of California again, this time for government waste and failure to carry out their duties. Or else maybe by that time the ADA plaintiffs who are out there right now, combined with all the angry media and the local chambers of commerce, will have already cleaned up everything and I won’t have to do anything. I’m hopeful.
Mother’s Day spa specials in L.A., O.C.
http://www.truereligions.in/