Elite club is hit with civil-rights complaints

Tucson Country Club promotes itself as a place "where history and tradition meet the future," but some members say the club still hasn't caught up with the present.

Two members have filed civil-rights complaints with the Arizona Attorney General's Office, saying the club discriminates against women by having a "men's grill," men-only tee times and membership policies that favor men.

By making their complaints, Nena Ashton and John Hunnicutt became the first to take a decades-old internal conflict outside the gates of the elite local club.

The complaints were underlined by the recent experience a prominent local businesswoman said she had at the club. About two months ago, Lisa Lovallo, the vice president in charge of the local Cox Communications office, was ejected from the men's grill after playing a round of golf at the club, she said.

The conflict has higher stakes for those involved than outsiders to the country- club scene may realize. Taking the issue outside the club means raising animosities that can spoil the social and business benefits of belonging to a club that includes many well-known local families.

Thomas Zlaket, the former chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court and a recent member of the club's board, is representing Tucson Country Club in the dispute.

The conflict also has possible political ramifications. It's the office of presumed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard that is investigating the club, and his potential Republican rival, attorney John Munger, is a member who defends the club's right to set its own policies.

"In my opinion, Terry Goddard should butt out," Munger said. "This is not a public accommodation - it is a private club. I think if Terry Goddard gets into this, it will be grandstanding."

But Goddard's spokeswoman, Anne Titus Hilby, said Goddard has no choice but to be involved.

"If we get a complaint, we're going to investigate it because we're going to be responsive to our constituents," she said.

Policies go way back

Separate accommodations for men go back to the origins of many country clubs, some of which allowed only men as members at their founding, said Jim Koppenhaver, president of Pellucid Corp., an Illinois-based golf-research firm.

"These are the last vestiges of the way these clubs grew up," Koppenhaver said.

At Tucson Country Club, complaints have arisen for at least 20 years about men's prerogatives at the club, members said. The men's grill is the symbol of the issue, but some members say the discrimination is broader and goes deeper.

Women are not allowed to play on the golf course before noon on Saturdays and before 10 a.m. on Sundays, said Ashton, who is president of Southern Arizona Paving and Construction and has been a member since 1997. Her husband is Larry Ashton, an owner of The Ashton Co. and son of that company's founder, Harold.

Nena Ashton also says the club's practices in assigning memberships rob women of voting powers. When a married couple joins, Ashton said, the club automatically puts the membership in the husband's name, effectively granting him voting powers in the club. Because only the members can hold office, that also prevents women from being club officeholders, Ashton said.

The current board is all male, and so have been the boards over the previous three years, according to the club's IRS filings. The dispute went into mediation Wednesday - a standard step in investigating civil-rights complaints - and the board members and attorney Zlaket cited the mediation in declining to comment, except on the issue of memberships.

Board member Chris Gleason said there is no gender distinction in membership. Men and women are both welcome to purchase memberships providing full voting rights, he said.

The long-standing complaints rose to a higher level last year when board president Jim Sakrison, a local attorney, established a Women's Advisory Committee. The committee, led by Vickie Slutes, a retired social worker and club member, circulated petitions asking that all adult members of the club be allowed into the grill, regardless of gender.

But when the board voted on the proposal, in March, it voted against any immediate changes. The board also rejected a compromise proposal that would have partitioned off a men's area within the grill, Slutes said via e-mail. And the new president, Timothy Stilb, eliminated the committee that made the proposals, Ashton said. Stilb, who runs Stilb & Associates insurance agency, also declined to comment.

"All last year, I believed that there seemed to be a movement by the then-president and promises that things might change at Tucson Country Club," Ashton said. "But the first thing that happened in the new presidency is that the women's advisory committee was eliminated."

"Handled amongst friends"

The Star contacted dozens of members of the club, and of the half-dozen-or-so who would comment, none would wholeheartedly support the status quo.

Former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, a member for 47 years, said some men like to have downtime where they can play poker or gin rummy and not be as guarded as they would be in mixed company. He said he wasn't in town to vote on any gender-equity proposals, but said if the club is to have a men's grill, it ought to have an equal one for women.

Dr. Bert Strug, who lives a few houses from the club, said concessions should be made, perhaps opening up access to the grill but setting aside a men's snack bar if men "want to pretend that they're in a fraternity in college." By prolonging the debate on this issue, he said, the club isn't paying enough attention to increasing membership and improving facilities.

Dan Lyons, a recent board member, said "it should be changed. It's time. We've moved on to another generation. We have more professional women who want to play and eat."

Gubernatorial candidate Munger offered perhaps the closest thing to a defense of the status quo. He said he wrote the board a letter supporting the idea of a women's grill. But he said he and his wife were aware of the policies when they joined the club in 1997.

"It should have been handled amongst friends and not as a legal matter. It should have been worked out privately," he said. "It's sad that a couple of disgruntled people are trying to force change upon the club."

Ashton said the opinions many members express in public don't square with what happens in the privacy of the boardroom. While most people seem to support changing the men's grill and other gender-specific policies, she said, it appears that social pressure helps preserve the status quo when the board votes.

Phoenix club sued

One of the reasons the club began grappling last year with the discrimination question is that the Attorney General's Office sued the Phoenix Country Club in September 2008 over policies similar to the Tucson club's. The state alleged in the case that the Phoenix club discriminated against women by having separate grills for each sex in which the women's grill was highly inferior.

"We were aware of the Phoenix Country Club case, and we were hopeful that the board would take pre-emptive action so that a similar situation could be avoided," Slutes said in an e-mail.

In its defense, the Phoenix club argued that it is a private club and thus exempt from the state civil rights law's requirements on equal accommodations. But the state argued that it allowed non-members to hold events at the club and therefore was a place of public accommodation, subject to civil-rights law.

The Phoenix club settled with the state in January by agreeing to open its men's and women's grills to both genders. The club said it would henceforth act strictly as a private club.

Hilby, of the attorney general's office, said she can't extrapolate from the Phoenix Country Club case to the Tucson Country Club's situation. The Phoenix case hinged on the fact that there was a high number of public events hosted at the club, and that a significant portion of the club's revenues came from those receipts, she said.

Tucson Country Club, 2950 N. Camino Principal, took note of the Phoenix case and began working to eliminate any event that could be considered public, said John Hunnicutt, an electronic-payment entrerpreneur who filed a complaint on behalf of himself and his wife, Loretta, in October. But he argues that the club can't "unring a bell" by eliminating public events when it has hosted so many in the past. And, he said, the club is also financially dependent on letting outsiders rent the club's facilities for events.

Ashton said that during a four-hour mediation session last Wednesday, Zlaket and other club representatives argued that the club is private and exempt from the civil-rights requirements. Neither Zlaket nor board members would comment.

Wider issue at stake

The grill issue is bigger than it may seem to outsiders, John Hunnicutt and Ashton said. The club offers other dining options, they said, but the men's grill is the only casual one.

"When the men play golf, when they get done, they go into the men's grill with their golf shoes," Ashton said. Women "don't really have a place to go, so we sit outside on the patio."

It may be a nice patio, but not on the summer's frequent hot days or the winter's cold evenings. And that's not the only disadvantage, Hunnicutt said.

"An awful lot of business gets done in the men's grill," he said. "Women, because they can't go in there, have no opportunity to connect."

Lovallo, of Cox Communications, faced the situation directly this year, she said. Lovallo grew up in the surrounding Tucson Country Club housing development, but her family did not belong to the club, she said.

When she finished a round of golf about two months ago with some male co-workers, they entered what Lovallo referred to as a "bar area" - actually, the men's grill. After she ordered a martini, Lovallo said, a waiter told her he would have to serve her outside because women aren't served in the men's grill.

Her party decided to leave, Lovallo said. Later she complained, and the club apologized, she said.

"I found it to be incredibly embarrassing for the country club," Lovallo said. "I said to them 'Cox is a company that does not discriminate.' As long as they have a policy like that, we will never patronize Tucson Country Club for anything."

When the club's board rejected the idea of reconsidering changes in May, John Hunnicutt said he and his wife had it.

"I resigned the club," Hunnicutt said, except that had a catch.

"You can't resign because the only way you can resign is if you sell your membership," and there's a waiting list of members trying to sell, he said.

So, Hunnicutt said, he told the club he was not going to pay anymore, and he and his wife wouldn't use the club.

"They were trying to figure out ways to make it go away," he said. "And they just couldn't figure out how to bring the club into the 21st century."