United States Jaycees v. McClure
| Decision Date | 08 May 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 51171.,51171. |
| Citation | 305 NW 2d 764 |
| Parties | The UNITED STATES JAYCEES, Appellants, v. Marilyn E. McCLURE, Warren Spannaus, and George A. Beck, Respondents. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Mackall, Crounse & Moore and Clay R. Moore, Minneapolis, Hall, Sublett, McCormick & Andrew and Carl D. Hall, Jr., Tulsa, Okl., for appellants.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., and Richard L. Varco, Jr., Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for respondents.
Lynn Hecht Schafran, New York City, Phyllis N. Segal, Kim E. Greene, and Judith I. Avner, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, New York City, for amicus curiae.
Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.
The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota has certified the following question to this court, in conformity with Minn.Stat. § 480.061(3) (1980): "Is the United States Jaycees `a place of public accommodation' within the meaning of Minn.Stat. § 363.01 Subdivision 18?" We answer in the affirmative.
The case and question arise from a dispute between a national organization and two of its local affiliates. Their dispute concerns an admittedly unequal granting of the privileges of membership. The national organization has settled on a policy that admits women to membership, but with the proviso that women shall not be accorded privileges that are full and equal to those accorded to men. The policy is effected by a distinction in the kinds of membership offered. Individual membership is offered to men, ages 18 to 35, in exchange for annual membership dues. Associate individual membership hereafter "associate membership" is offered to a business concern, association, group or individual not qualified by the by-laws to be an individual member. The annual dues charge is a few dollars less than the charge for an individual membership. Women, by definition, may be offered only associate membership.
The difference in the dues charged for those memberships is small; the difference in the privileges accorded is considerable. Associate members are not allowed to stand or be nominated for office; they are not allowed to vote in such elections, nor vote on any other matters of decision in the local, state, or national organizations; and, though women are allowed to participate in many of the programs of the organization and contribute their time and effort toward making those programs successful, women are not allowed to be the recipients of any of the numerous achievement awards given by the local, state and national organizations. The awards and the prestige are restricted to men. Men continue to receive awards even when, after age 35, they can only purchase the otherwise same associate membership as women.
This membership policy has not met with the approval of the organization's Minneapolis and St. Paul chapters. In 1974, the Minneapolis chapter began to allow women to purchase individual memberships, and accorded them privileges that were full and equal to those accorded to men. In 1975, the St. Paul chapter made the same change. The national organization, however, voted down an amendment to its by-laws that would have allowed individual memberships to be sold to women. The organization decided, instead, to set up a "pilot membership program". Local chapters in five states could let women purchase individual memberships. Only three of the affiliated state organizations voted to let their local chapters try the pilot program. The affiliated state organization in Minnesota voted not to try it. In June 1978, the president of the national organization ordered the pilot programs terminated. The national organization repeated its rejection of the proposed change in its policy of letting women purchase only an associate membership, costing a few dollars less but worth much less than the individual memberships that men could buy.
By letter, the national organization advised the Minneapolis and St. Paul chapters of its imminent plans to vote on whether to revoke their respective charters because those Minnesota chapters had violated the organization's by-laws by continuing to let women purchase individual memberships. On the previous day, December 14, 1978, the Minneapolis and St. Paul chapters brought before the Minnesota Department of Human Rights a charge of sexual discrimination against the national organization. They alleged violations of Minn.Stat. § 363.03(3), (6) (1980). The commissioner of the department investigated and found probable cause that there was a violation. The department attempted without success to conciliate the matter.
On October 9, 1979, a State Hearing Examiner found the national organization in violation of Minn.Stat. § 363.03(3) (1980), the pertinent part of which reads:
It is an unfair discriminatory practice:
To deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation because of race, color, creed, religion, disability, national origin or sex.
The Examiner held that the national organization discriminated unfairly on the basis of sex by refusing to let women purchase individual memberships. He enjoined the national organization from such discrimination in any of its chapter affiliates within Minnesota, and from taking sanctions against any of them for selling individual memberships to women.
The national organization responded with a petition for review of the Examiner's order to the Ramsey County District Court, and commenced an action, in the United States District Court for the State of Minnesota, for the purpose of reserving determination of federal constitutional claims arising from the application of Minn.Stat. § 363.03(3) (1980). The federal district court, in an attempt to expedite a decision of the pivotal issue, certified to this court the question of whether this national organization is a "`place of public accommodation' within the meaning of Minn.Stat. § 363.01, Subdivision 18?"
Legislative guidance
In Minn.Stat. § 363.01(18) (1980) the legislature expressed its own special and unusually broad definition of the term "place of public accommodation": "a business, accommodation, refreshment, entertainment, recreation, or transportation facility of any kind, whether licensed or not, whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations are extended, offered, sold, or otherwise made available to the public." The legislature defines a term only because it intends in some measure to depart from the ordinary sense of that term. Thus, there is a presumption that we are not to substitute the literal, ordinary meaning of "place of public accommodation" for the definition the legislature has provided.
The legislature has, moreover, cautioned us against narrowly construing any of the provisions of Minn.Stat. § 363.03 (1980). It has broadened the term "place of public accommodation" to mean "a business * * * facility of any kind * * * whose goods * * and privileges * * * are sold, or otherwise made available to the public". Minn.Stat. § 363.01(18) (1980). It has also expressly required a broad construction of all provisions of the statute by order of Minn.Stat. § 363.11 (1980) which reads, in pertinent part: "The provisions of this chapter shall be construed liberally for the accomplishment of the purposes thereof." Minn.Stat. § 363.12 (1980) states those purposes to be "to secure for persons in this state, freedom from discrimination * * *." To understand accurately what those purposes here require in a construction of Minn.Stat. § 363.01(18) (1980), we must review the history of that provision and of Minn.Stat. § 363.03(3) (1980) whose key term it defines.
Legislative history
In 1885, ten years before the United States Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the "separate but equal" fiction justifying the Jim Crow laws, the legislature of the State of Minnesota chose a different course, that of "full and equal" privileges, as it enacted this statute:
We note that the legislature intended the statute to be applied to both fixed sites (e. g., hotels and restaurants) and mobile sites (e. g., public conveyances). Such sites were not to be limited to those enumerated, but were to include "other places of public * * refreshment * *...
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