LESBIAN COUPLE LOSES SUIT AGAINST SAN DIEGO CLUB: From the San Francisco Chronicle

A country club that denied a lesbian couple a family membership did not discriminate illegally, a state appellate court says, because California law doesn't require businesses to treat married and unmarried couples equally. ...

State laws prohibit discrimination based on marital status in employment, housing, insurance and several other commercial categories, and have expanded the rights of domestic partners in areas formerly reserved to married couples, like adoption, inheritance and hospital visitation.

But California's Unruh Act, the chief antidiscrimination law that regulates how businesses deal with their customers, has never been interpreted to cover marital status. Monday's ruling, the first by a state court to address the issue in 12 years, declined to make an exception for same-sex couples who can't legally marry under state law.

"As the law stands now, a marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman,'' said Justice Gilbert Nares in the 3-0 ruling. "Plaintiffs (the couple challenging the club's policy) desire that their domestic partnership be placed on an equal footing. This would run contrary to the policy, as engrained in state statutes, supporting the institution of marriage.''

The court gave plaintiffs B. Birgit Koebke and Kendall French a limited victory, allowing them to sue Bernardo Heights Country Club in San Diego for failing to enforce its policy even-handedly by allegedly issuing memberships to some unmarried opposite-sex couples. But the plaintiffs' lawyer, Jon Davidson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the ruling was disappointing.

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posted by Eve at 1:08 PM | link

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