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Recent trends in anti-discrimination lawsuits against private golf clubs.

Article Excerpt
The exclusive membership policies of certain private golf clubs have long been the target of public outcry and social pressure. President Kennedy was once famously challenged by future Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, then Kennedy's Secretary of Labor, over his membership in the Links Country Club because the club excluded Jews from membership. Reportedly, President Kennedy replied with a chuckle, "Hell, Arthur, they don't even allow Catholics."

In 1990, discrimination at private clubs rose to the forefront of public consciousness when Hall Thompson, founder of Shoal Creek, at that time an all-white club in Birmingham, AL and the site of the 1990 PGA Championship, declared that his club would not be pressured into accepting African-American members. "This is our home, and we pick and choose who we want," Mr. Thompson told the Birmingham Post Herald. "We have the right to associate or not associate with whomever we choose." Shoal Creek's purported stand for freedom of association proved to be short-lived. Nine days prior to the PGA Championship, Shoal Creek agreed to integrate its membership after African-American organizations threatened to picket the club and sponsors pulled approximately $2 million worth of commercials from ABC and ESPN.

More recently, in 2003, the exclusivity of Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, became a topic of national debate when Martha Burke, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, demanded that the club allow women to become members. Hootie Johnson, then chairman of Augusta National, responded that, "There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet." Mr. Johnson circumvented Ms. Burke's attempts to exert pressure on the sponsors of the Masters by televising the tournament without commercials. Today, Augusta National retains its men-only membership policy.

While instances of blatant discrimination such as the outright exclusion of certain groups from membership found at Shoal Creek and Augusta National often receive frenzied coverage from the national media, such examples are relatively infrequent among private clubs. According to a USA Today survey conducted in 2003, most private golf clubs have even enacted written non-discrimination policies regarding membership.

A less-publicized and more common form of discrimination involves the disparate treatment of...

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