CONNIE KREATE; VIVIAN COLEMIRE; AND E. HANLIN BAVELY, TRUSTEE v. DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS
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RENDERED:
NOVEMBER 22, 2000; 10:00 a.m.
TO BE PUBLISHED
C ommonwealth O f K entucky
C ourt O f A ppeals
NO.
1999-CA-001846-MR
CONNIE KREATE;
VIVIAN COLEMIRE; AND
E. HANLIN BAVELY, TRUSTEE
APPELLANTS
APPEAL FROM CAMPBELL CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE LEONARD L. KOPOWSKI, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 99-CI-00048
v.
DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS
APPELLEE
OPINION
AFFIRMING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE:
BUCKINGHAM, KNOPF, AND SCHRODER, JUDGES.
KNOPF, JUDGE:
Vivian Colemire, Connie Kreate, and Kreate’s
successor in interest, E. Hanlin Bavely,1 appeal from a July 7,
1999, order of Campbell Circuit Court acknowledging Colemire and
Kreate’s abandonment of age-discrimination-based claims against
their former employer, the appellee, Disabled American Veterans
(DAV).
The July 7th order rendered final and appealable an
earlier dismissal of similar claims by Colemire and Kreate based
1
Bavely is trustee of Kreate’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy estate. Through Bavely the estate
asserts an interest in Kreate’s cause of action. 11 U.S.C. §§ 701 et seq.
on disability-discrimination.2
The appellants’ disability-based
claims are the subject of this appeal.
The trial court ruled
that DAV is exempt from the provisions of Kentucky’s Civil Rights
Act that forbid disability-based discrimination by employers.
The appellants insist that DAV is not exempt.
For the following
reasons, we agree with the trial court.
Colemire and Kreate allege that they are disabled
individuals as that term is used in Kentucky’s Civil Rights Act,
KRS Chapter 344 (the Act).
They further allege that, as of the
beginning of 1998, they had been employed “for a considerable
period” at the DAV facility in Cold Spring, Campbell County,
Kentucky, where they processed contributions mailed to the
organization.
In 1998, they claim, the manager of the Cold
Spring facility reorganized the office and moved them from the
jobs they had long performed to jobs their disabilities made
difficult if not impossible.
When they allegedly objected to
this change in the conditions of their employment, they were
advised to quit their jobs and to apply for disability benefits.
Meanwhile, their former positions were given to newly hired
workers who were younger than the appellants and not disabled.
Denied accommodation for their disabilities, Colemire and Kreate
were compelled to quit their jobs.
Soon thereafter they brought
this suit.
2
The prior order was entered April 21, 1999, in response to DAV’s CR 12 motion to
dismiss. Motions for specific findings and to alter or amend that result were denied by order
entered June 3, 1999.
-2-
The appellants’ complaint seeks damages and injunctive
relief pursuant to KRS 344.040, which makes it an unlawful
practice for an employer
[t]o fail or refuse to hire, or to discharge
any individual, or otherwise to discriminate
against an individual with respect to
compensation, terms, conditions, or
privileges of employment, . . . because the
person is a qualified individual with a
disability.
As noted above, DAV responded to the complaint by
denying that it is an “employer” in these circumstances under the
Act.
KRS 344.030(2), upon which DAV relies, provides in
pertinent part as follows:
for purposes of determining discrimination
based on disability, employer means a person
engaged in an industry affecting commerce who
has fifteen (15) or more employees for each
working day in each of twenty (20) or more
calendar weeks in the current or preceding
calendar year, and any agent of that person,
. . . . For the purposes of determining
discrimination based on disability, employer
shall not include:
. . . .
(b) A bona fide private membership club
(other than a labor organization) that is
exempt from taxation under Section 501(c) of
the Internal Revenue Service Code of 1986.
There is no dispute that DAV enjoys a tax exemption
under Section 501(c).
The trial court agreed, furthermore, that
DAV is a “bona fide private membership club,” and thus concluded
that it is not subject to suits, such as Colemire and Kreate’s,
for disability discrimination.
It is from this determination
that Colemire and Kreate appeal.
-3-
As a preliminary matter, we note that, although DAV
tendered its motion to dismiss pursuant to CR 12, it supplemented
its motion with affidavits and other matters outside the
pleadings.
The motion to dismiss effectively became one for
summary judgment, therefore, and we shall fashion our review
accordingly.
CR 12.02.
Summary judgments involve no finding of
disputed fact and are reviewed without deference to the
conclusions of the trial court.
As did the trial court, this
Court asks whether material facts are in dispute and whether the
party moving for judgment is clearly entitled thereto as a matter
of law.
Under this state’s rules of practice, summary judgments
are to be granted cautiously; they are appropriate only when it
appears impossible for the non-movant to prove facts establishing
a right to relief or release, as the case may be.
Steelvest,
Inc. v. Scansteel Service Center, Inc., Ky., 807 S.W.2d 476
(1991).
Because we are called upon to construe a statute, it
may also be well to note at the outset that guiding our
construction is the general rule that we are to give effect to
the intent of the legislature as expressed in the statutory
language and context and revealed by the evil the law was
intended to remedy.
Sisters of Charity v. Raikes, Ky., 984
S.W.2d 464 (1998); Democratic Party of Kentucky v. Graham, Ky.,
976 S.W.2d 423 (1998); Wathen v. General Electric Company, 115
F.3d 400 (6th Cir. 1997).
The statutory context is particularly important in this
case because the Kentucky Civil Rights Act has not been written
-4-
on a blank slate, but has been based extensively on federal civil
rights law.
Indeed, “[e]xecution within the state of the
policies embodied [in federal civil rights legislation]” is an
express purpose of our Act.
KRS 344.020(1).
Federal legislation
has provided not only much of the substance of our Act, but also
much of its form.
An exemption like the one at issue in this
case for “bona fide private membership clubs” appears in Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
42 U.S.C. 2000e(b).
The
same exemption is included in the Americans With Disabilities Act
of 1990.
42 U.S.C. § 12111(5).
This latter act seems to have
been the basis of our statute’s exemption, which first became
effective in 1992.
Because there is apparently no Kentucky
appellate decision construing KRS 344.030(2)(b), and because of
the General Assembly’s intent that our law comport with federal
law, we shall turn to the federal-court decisions that have
applied the “private membership club” exemptions appearing in the
federal statutes.3
3
Among the materials DAV submitted in support of its motion to dismiss were nine “right
to sue” letters from the EEOC to individuals who had filed complaints with that federal agency
alleging disability-based discrimination by the DAV. The letters are from the period December
1986 through October 1998, and in each the EEOC dismissed the complaint on the ground that
the DAV was exempt from suit under Title VII because it “is a bona fide membership club.” Not
surprisingly, DAV submits that these dismissals are conclusive of the issue before us. The
appellants, on the other hand, would have us disregard these notices because they did not result
from a fully adversarial process and because they do not explain why the agency concluded as it
did. The import of these notices, we believe, falls between these two extremes. Courts owe
some deference to an agency’s interpretation of its controlling legislation, but their fundamental
duty, even in the administrative context, is to construe pertinent statutes so as to give effect to
legislative intent. Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky Revenue Cabinet, Ky.,
689 S.W.2d 14 (1985). Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81
L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). Accordingly, we are not completely indifferent to the EEOC notices
deeming DAV exempt from Title VII, but, as conclusory as these notices are, they provide very
(continued...)
-5-
In Quijano v. University Federal Credit Union, 617 F.2d
129 (5th Cir. 1980), for example, a former employee alleged that
a credit union had injured her as a result of its racially
discriminatory hiring practices.
The court was asked to decide
whether the federally chartered, tax exempt credit union was a
“private membership club” under Title VII.
The court duly began
by trying to fit the ordinary meaning of the phrase to its
statutory context:
The sole issue presented for review is
whether the district court erred in granting
summary judgment for the University Federal
Credit Union holding that the credit union
was not an employer within the language of
section 701(b)(2) of Title VII. The
proposition which guides our analysis of this
question is that "Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 is to be accorded a
liberal construction in order to carry out
the purposes of Congress to eliminate the
inconvenience, unfairness and humiliation of
racial discrimination." Parham v.
Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F.2d
421, 425 (8th Cir. 1970). Accord, Rogers v.
EEOC, 454 F.2d 234 (5th Cir. 1971), cert.
denied, 406 U.S. 957, 92 S.Ct. 2058, 32
L.Ed.2d 343 (1972). The statute's definition
of "employer" is entitled to similar liberal
construction. Baker v. Stuart Broadcasting
Co., 560 F.2d 389 (8th Cir. 1977).
. . . .
Webster's Third International Dictionary of
the English Language offers the following
definition at page 430:
club—an association of persons for
social and recreational purposes or
for the promotion of some common
object (as literature, science,
political activity) usually jointly
3
(...continued)
little guidance to the construction of KRS 344.030(2) and so are of limited authority.
-6-
supported and meeting periodically,
membership in social clubs usually
being conferred by ballot and
carrying the privilege of use of
the club property.
The common understanding of the term "club"
is reinforced by Webster's definition. The
adjectives "bona fide", "private" and
"membership", included in the statute serve
to indicate the more limited type of club
sought to be exempted by the narrow exception
in the statute. These modifiers suggest that,
in order to be exempt from coverage by Title
VII, an association of persons for social or
recreational purposes or for the promotion of
some common literary, scientific or political
objective must also be legitimate (as opposed
to sham), private (as opposed to public) and
must require some meaningful conditions of
limited membership.
Id. at 130-131 (footnotes omitted).
In holding that the credit union was not entitled to
the private club exemption, the Fifth Circuit emphasized the
credit union’s narrowly mercantile purpose.
The court likened
the credit union to automobile clubs that had been found nonexempt under Title VII in other cases.
The members of such
associations, the court noted, did not commingle or seek from
their associations a social outlet and were not selected for
membership on that basis.
Rather, they had banded together, in
the court’s words, almost solely for the purpose of achieving a
sort of volume discount in the acquisition of certain services.
Although this was a legitimate purpose, although the credit union
was indeed tax exempt, and although the credit union’s membership
was plainly limited in the sense of being offered only to the
occupants of certain jobs, these factors did not overcome, the
court ruled, the absence of social intercourse from the credit
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union’s purposes and practices.
Such intercourse, the court
suggested, is at the heart of what is ordinarily understood as a
private club and is one of the few interests fundamental enough
to justify an exception from Congress’s otherwise clear intention
to eradicate invidious discrimination.4
Similarly, in Fesel v. Masonic Home of Delaware, Inc.,
428 F. Supp. 573 (D.Del. 1977), the Court ruled that a nursing
home affiliated with a masonic lodge was not a club and so was
not exempt from Title VII.
Although its “membership” (i.e. its
residents) was strictly limited to Masons and their spouses, the
home principally provided housing and health-care services, not
the sort of sociability ordinarily associated with a private
club.
See also Mills v. Fox, 421 F. Supp. 519 (E. D. N.Y. 1976)
(nursing home not entitled to exemption because is did not
resemble what is ordinarily understood as a private club).
And
in Willson v. Association of Graduates of the United States
Military Academy, Westpoint, 946 F. Supp. 294 (S.D. N.Y. 1996),
4
A similar focus on sociality has informed the cases construing the slightly different
private club exemption in Title II of the Civil Rights Act. 42 U.S.C. § 2000a(e). Title II forbids
invidious discrimination in places of public accommodation, resort, or amusement. Cf. KRS
344.120. Rotary clubs, Jaycees, Kiwanis clubs, Little League, Boys Clubs, and the Boy Scouts,
among others, have all sought exemption from Title II or state-law counterparts on the ground
that they are distinctly private membership associations and not public accommodations. In
making this distinction courts have looked closely at, among other things, the extent to which the
association’s purposes and practices are sociable as opposed to commercial or business related.
See Board of Directors of Rotary International v. Rotary Club, 481 U.S. 537, 95 L. Ed. 2d 474,
107 S. Ct. 1940 (1987) (membership association’s other purposes sufficiently over shadowed by
its business purposes to make it subject, within the United States Constitution, to state public
accommodations statute); Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 82 L. Ed. 2d 462, 104
S. Ct. 3244 (1984) (same); Welsh v. Boy Scouts of America, 993 F.2d 1267 (7th Cir. 1993)
(membership association’s purposes primarily sociable and so not subject to state public
accommodations statute); Kiwanis International v. Ridgewood, 806 F.2d 486 (3rd Cir. 1986)
(same).
-8-
the court rejected a summary judgment motion by an alumni
association facing discrimination charges because the
association’s claim that it was entitled to the private club
exemption had been countered by plausible allegations that the
association was a mere fund-raising organ and not a bona fide
club whose primary purposes included social intercourse.
Sociability was also a crucial factor in Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission v. The Chicago Club, 86 F.3d
1423 (7th Cir. 1996).
In that case, the EEOC sought to compel
one of Chicago’s historic clubs to comply with Title VII’s
record-keeping and reporting requirements.
Against the club’s
assertion of the exemption, the EEOC noted that the association’s
membership is fairly large, (in excess of 1200), and through a
liberal guest policy, club facilities are available to a
substantial portion of the public.
These facts, the EEOC
asserted, belied the club’s claim to be private.
The court strongly disagreed.
It regarded the
appellee’s practices and purposes--its providing for its members,
as one of its principal functions, dining facilities and meeting
spaces; its limiting new memberships to existing members’
acquaintances who are nominated and elected by existing members;
and its extending guest privileges only to those properly
sponsored by a member--as plainly geared toward private social
intercourse.
Indeed, the court chided the EEOC for seeking “to
change the rules of the game so as to facilitate [its]
implementation of its ambitious agenda for oversight of private
clubs under Title VII.”
86 F.3d at 1433.
-9-
In upholding the Chicago Club’s claimed exemption from
Title VII, the Seventh Circuit recognized the factors potentially
indicative of that status quoted above from Quijano and cited
these factors from an EEOC policy statement:
(1) the extent to which it limits its
facilities and services to club members and
their guests;
(2) the extent to which and/or the manner in
which it is controlled or owned by its
membership; and
(3) whether, and, if so, to what extent and
in what manner it publicly advertises to
solicit members or to promote the use of its
facilities or services by the general public.
Id.
By all these standards, the court believed, the Chicago Club
is private.
The EEOC conceded the second and third factors: the
club was completely owned and controlled by its members, and it
did not solicit either members or guests by public advertisement.
As for the first factor, size alone, the court stated, does not
determine an association’s status.
Rather, the court opined,
selective membership practices are the
essence of private clubs. Decisions
concerning a club's membership expansion are
to individual members significant as their
own decisions to join the club. One
presumably affiliates with a private club
because of the community of interests or
agendas shared by the membership. The
integrity of those common interests or
agendas has much at stake in the membership
selection process, and membership
participation in the selection of new members
is a crucial attribute of a private club. By
participating in the selection process,
members guarantee that the interests they
share with other members will continue to
bind the membership in the future.
86 F.3d at 1436.
The Seventh Circuit concluded that the Chicago
Club satisfied this selective membership requirement.
“The
undisputed facts suggest that the members of the Club exercise
-10-
complete autonomy in the selection process.”
Id.
This
discussion by the Court in Chicago Club, concerning “selective
membership” seems to us again to be based on the fundamental
interest people have in intimate social contact.
A “private
club” is one that limits its membership to further such social
intercourse.
We have referred at some length to these precedents to
underscore both the importance of the issue raised by this appeal
and its difficulty.
As these cases show, fundamental interests
are implicated on both sides.
How best to characterize and
coordinate them is by no means clear.
As we have indicated in
our discussion of these cases, it seems to us that exemption from
federal civil rights laws has been recognized only when the
membership association has had as one of its primary purposes
genuine social intercourse among its members.
That purpose,
furthermore, must be meaningfully reflected in the method by
which members are chosen and guests admitted to the club’s
facilities.
This requirement comports with the ordinary meaning
of the statutory term “club” as well as with that term’s antidiscrimination context, which clearly indicates that the
exemption is to be a narrow one.5
This is not to say that an
exempt private association may not have purposes other than
sociality.
Distinctly private clubs form around a vast array of
5
Although the distinction does not affect our present analysis, we note that Kentucky’s
exemption is even narrower than the federal one. It is limited to “discrimination with respect to
disability.” Whether it is a private membership club or not, therefore, DAV (assuming that it
qualifies otherwise as an “employer” under our statute) may not discriminate in its employment
practices on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or age forty (40) and over.
-11-
interests and enthusiasms from the most narrowly personal to the
political.
It is to say, however, that sociality must remain a
principal purpose of the association relative to any others,
particularly mercantile ones.
The appellants insist that DAV’s purposes are not
appropriately private and geared toward sociality to exempt it
from compliance with KRS 344.040.
They note that DAV is a
federally chartered corporation, whose purposes and membership
are dictated by its founding legislation.
36 U.S.C. §§ 50301 et
seq. (formerly 36 U.S.C. §§ 90 et seq.).
DAV is dedicated, among
other purposes, “to advance the interests, and work for the
betterment, of all wounded, injured, and disabled American
veterans.”
36 U.S.C. § 50302 (3).
To further that aim, DAV has
established national and regional offices that provide services
to all veterans and all disabled veterans, whether members of DAV
or not.
Its total membership exceeds 1,000,000, and admission to
DAV, while restricted to individuals disabled in the line of duty
during time of war in the service of the United States armed
forces or its allies,6 is not subject to the sort of member
control discussed in Chicago Club, supra, which was based on
existing members’ subjective estimates of the prospective
member’s compatibility.
Its membership, rather, may perhaps be
characterized as open to anyone in the general public who has
come to occupy a particular role, like the credit union
6
36 U.S.C. § 50303(a)(1)(A), (2)(A).
-12-
membership discussed in Quijano v. University Federal Credit
Union, supra.
Of particular significance, appellants assert, in
demonstrating DAV’s essentially public nature is the fact that
its federal income-tax exemption derives not from the section of
the tax code that refers specifically to “clubs,”7 but rather
from the section exempting “[c]ivic leagues or organizations not
organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion
of social welfare[.]”
26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(4).
Moreover,
appellants note, donations to DAV are tax deductible by the
donor, a deduction that would not exist if DAV did not put those
donations to public uses.
In short, appellants contend, DAV is
to a large extent devoted to fund raising and to the provision of
public service, and so, like the nursing home in Fesel v. Masonic
Home of Delaware, Inc., supra, it should not be deemed exempt
from the civil rights laws.
We agree with appellants that DAV’s interest-group and
public-service purposes tend to weigh against its claimed
exemption as a private club.
On the other hand, however, DAV
does serve its members’ interest in sociability.
True, its
membership is large and is selected on an objective basis.
military experience admitting one to membership to the DAV,
The
however, unlike the employment relationship in Quijano, is
profoundly meaningful for almost all who go through it.
It
defines, it seems to us, not simply an interest group, but a
7
26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(7).
-13-
group for whom a very special social intimacy is possible.
Encouragement of such intimacy, furthermore, is among DAV’s
express purposes:
The purposes of the corporation are
. . .
(5) to stimulate a feeling of mutual
devotion, helpfulness, and comradeship among
all wounded, injured, and disabled veterans.
This purpose is given practical expression in the local chapters
of the DAV, which serve as clubs for their members in much the
same way the Chicago Club does for its members.
Is the DAV, then, the institutional means for
individuals with common economic interests to band together, like
the credit union in Quijano?
Is it a public-service provider,
like the nursing homes in Fesel and Mills?
Or is it a private
club serving its members’ interest in comradeship, and sociality,
like the membership association in Chicago Club?
The problem is
that the DAV is all of these and is each of them to a significant
degree.
As discussed above, however, a private association’s
public activities need not disqualify it from exemption provided
that the association’s structure remains meaningfully private and
that private sociability remains, in practice as well as theory,
one of the association’s core purposes.
DAV satisfies this test.
We are persuaded that
Notwithstanding DAV’s significant
public purposes and activities, its core purpose, embodied in its
many local chapters, is to provide social opportunities for its
members.
Its membership, moreover, is genuinely limited in a
manner calculated to further that private purpose.
-14-
The trial
court did not err, therefore, by concluding that DAV, as a bona
fide private membership club, is exempt from KRS 344.040's
provision against disability discrimination.
Given this conclusion, a second issue raised by Kreate
needs only brief comment.
Between the time she left her
employment with DAV and when she filed this suit, Kreate
petitioned for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code.
U.S.C. §§ 701 et seq.
11
On her petition she listed as an asset her
potential cause of action against her former employer.
Soon
after this suit was commenced, DAV moved to have Kreate dismissed
as a party on the ground that the bankruptcy estate had become
the only entity with standing to assert Kreate’s claim.
The
trial court agreed with this contention and as part of its April
21, 1999, order granted DAV’s motion.
Kreate has appealed from
that ruling.
She maintains that some of the relief to which she
would be entitled were her cause of action to succeed (future
damages, for example) would not be property of her bankruptcy
estate.
Her interest in the cause of action has thus not been
completely subsumed by the bankruptcy, she argues, and
consequently the trial court erred by ruling that she lacks
standing.
Because the dismissal of Kreate’s cause of action has
rendered moot this question of her standing, this latter issue is
not subject to our review.
Sharp v. Robinson, Ky., 388 S.W.2d
121 (1965); Civil Service Commission v. Tankersley, Ky., 330
S.W.2d 392 (1959).
Therefore, we must decline to address it.
-15-
In sum, although it is certainly ironic that an
association of disabled persons should find itself seeking refuge
from a law forbidding disability-based discrimination, we are
persuaded that DAV has a right to the refuge it seeks.
The
disability-based discrimination claims brought by Colemire and
Kreate do not apply, according to KRS 344.030(2), to bona fide
private membership clubs.
Although DAV is federally chartered,
has become a large organization with various tax advantages, and
has succeeded in providing important public services to veterans
beyond its own membership, DAV, especially through its local
chapters, is fundamentally concerned with restoring and enriching
the private social lives of its members.
Because DAV’s principal
purpose is strongly geared toward serving its members in this way
as a private club, we agree with the trial court that, despite
its public activities, it is exempt from Colemire and Kreate’s
suit.
For these reasons, we affirm the July 7, 1999, order of
the Campbell Circuit Court.
ALL CONCUR.
BRIEFS FOR APPELLANTS:
BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
Steven L. Schiller
Newport, Kentucky
John O. Sheller
Smith and Smith, Attorneys
Louisville, Kentucky
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