South Carolina Ping
Posted on 08/11/2005 11:55:37 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
An extended African-American family, most of whom reside in Maryland, today announce the settlement of their discrimination claim against a vacation rental condominium resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which barred them from using its swimming pool. Among other things, the settlement of the complaint filed by the Lawyers' Committee and the law firm of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, provides the plaintiffs with monetary compensation, the amount of which cannot be disclosed under the agreement.
Over 100 African-American family members alleged that they were racially discriminated against when they stayed at Baytree III, part of the Baytree Plantation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the Turner-Gray family reunion in July 2001. The plaintiffs alleged that shortly after they arrived for their family reunion weekend, Stuart Jenkins, property manager of Baytree III and president of the Homeowners' Association, padlocked and chained the entrance to the pool area closing it off to the reunion attendees. According to the complaint, the day after the reunion ended, Jenkins removed the padlock and chain and reopened the pool to guests, personally inviting white guests to use the pool during their stay.
"We selected Baytree as the site for our reunion in part because of its amenities, including the pool facilities," stated Gloria Turner-Simpkins, one of the plaintiffs who organized the family reunion. "But instead of being able to enjoy them, because of these discriminatory actions, we were humiliated and saddened, during what was meant to be an enjoyable family gathering," added Mrs. Turner-Simpkins.
In addition to monetary compensation, the Homeowners' Association agreed to issue a written apology to the family members, to conduct fair housing training for individuals involved in the day-today management of Baytree III, and to inform its members of its policy of non-discrimination.
"This settlement makes clear that such racist behavior and such blatant disregard for the law will not be tolerated," stated Charles Lester, a partner in the Atlanta office of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
"It is sad but true that in this day and age there are still those who want to stop African Americans from enjoying the same privileges as everyone else," said Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "While no amount of money can make these family members whole for the racist acts they had to endure and to explain to their small children, this settlement does give them some measure of justice."
I imagine the insurance company for the association figured it was way cheaper to settle than it would be to go to court.
It usually is.
Thank You Mr.Robinson Sir.
I guess their money wasn't as green as the white family's money?! What a bigot. The article didn't mention whether or not he was fired. I hope so.
Dagummit, Jim! I wanted to have some fun with him since I'm for the time being not completely medicated. I'm sure there will be others like that along in the future.
Was this a Zot? Did I miss it? A pseudo-Zot? Perhaps a quasi-zot?
And yet you just did...how ironic.
I never heard about this until today. Horrible, if true. As an aside, I thought African Americans were supposed to boycott South Carolina?
A Bigzot is when the Big Boss (Jim Rob) zots a bigot.
The laws are not out of synch with the Constitution.
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1873 (all enacted by the same folks: the original intent of these amendments was very clear) forbade discrimination, and gave a public right of action for private discrimination.
It was the Supreme Court, using that vaunted power of judicial review, that struck down those laws, and effectively tore those three amendments out of the Constitution, in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Now, I certainly agree that justifying the anti-discrimination decisions on the basis of the Commerce Clause was thin gruel and bad beer. A better, original intent argument would be that private discrimination against blacks in places of business violates the original intent of the 13th and 14th amendments. It is a "badge and incident of slavery".
The US amended its Constitution right after the Civil War to make blacks free and equal, and passed laws to enforce that. Racists managed to regain control of the government, and used the Supreme Court to nullify all of that through pure judicial activism.
What was the original intent of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments? Precisely to end the oppression of the black race by the white race. That was the point. The legislative history (the 1860s equivalent of The Federalist Papers) tell us what the drafters were thinking and why they did it. So does the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and 1873, both of which resound in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Anti-discrimination laws based explicitly on forbidding private race discrimination are a federal matter, and have been so since the Constitution was formally amended three times in the 1860s. That was the whole purpose of the Amendments.
Commerce clause was a bad argument.
13th and 14th Amendments and their original intent are an invincible argument...to any Constitutional Originalist anyway. Judicial activists, of course, can ignore all that original intent and just make up whatever they want...like strange commerce clause constructions, or that the post-Civil War Amendments were not intended to make racial equality a federal constitutional issue...
I (and I believe most people) condemn discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics such as race, gender, etc. because I believe it is morally wrong and destructive, both to those who practice it and to those against whom it is practiced, and, whether I am selling a home, running a business or hiring an employee...practicing discrimination is economically stupid.
Yet for all of those reasons that we condemn discrimination, one would assume that most recognize that legal prohibitions on it would be unnecessary.
Yet so many people on here take what I see as a paternalistic view that we must outlaw private discrimination (and it is private...locating your home or business on a public street or selling to the public does not make one a public entity...which is why the Civil Rights Act and related federal legsilation was based on the Commerce Clause and not the 14th Amendment (which would have authorized Congressional legislation prohibiting discrimination by states... Congess recognized that they were regulating private property and private conduct by non-state actors). I have to assume that these people:
(1) have a very low opinion of their fellow Americans and believe that, unless discrimination is legally prohibited, it will thrive...either because substantial numbers of their fellow Americans are incapable of seeing the immorality of discrimination (in which case, it must be asked...is this whole representative government thing really capable of working?) OR because they believe their fellow Americans are immoral...OR
(2) because they themselves believe that the downside to practicing discrimination will not outweigh any benefits people derive from it and therefore, again, discrimination will thrive
Well said. Thanks or summing up.
The race issue was not necessary here. Private property is not the subject, either. This company engaged in a breach of contract. That should be condemned. Racism and private property rights are really outside the purview of this case, no matter what the company settled the case over.
These family members paid their own money wilfully, and this company accepted their money. Yet the company would not allow access to all aminities that the family paid for? This company doesn't have a leg to stand on, do they?
LOL
And to me it's an assinine thing to say.......regardless.
Private property rights is also a sideshow. It's a clear breach of contract. No matter where one comes down on race, this is a bad business practice. That should be vociferously condemned by all of us.
Couldn't say it better myself.
Irontank, are you a constitutional originalist?
Does the original intent of the drafters of the Constitution count a lot for you?
Good!
Go and read the legislative debates of the 1860s, when the three amendments to the Constitution which ended slavery and extended civil rights to blacks were passed. Go and read the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed by the same people who debated the amendments, and all for the same reasons.
They passed a private right of action in federal court against racial discrimination. That was, indeed, the original intent of the drafters of those amendments, and those amendments were duly adopted by the states. Those amendments, and the reasons for them, therefore stand on identical ground as the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights, and the rest of the Constitution.
The purpose of those laws was to end slavery, and the badges and incidents of slavery, to make black people equal to white people in every way. That was the intent, that is what the Congressmen and state legislators who enacted those three amendments debated, and passed.
It was the Supreme Court that, quite maliciously, reversed all of that, paring it back, reducing the right of action. Because the Supreme Court was as activist - to promote racism in the late 1800s - as it has been in our day. The laws were overturned, or abridged, and three amendments to the Constitution were ignored.
Private property rights did not extend to the right to discriminate against black people in business, that is perfectly clear, painfully clear, from the "Federalist Papers" of the 1860s, the Congressional Record of the debates over those amendments and the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
If one is an originalist, one has to accept that the Constitution was duly amended with the INTENT of making segregation and discrimination illegal. Because a bunch of racist bastards in this country wanted to continue to beat blacks down, they used the judiciary to block, and then relied on local democracy to supplant the original intent of the Constitution, as amended thrice in the 1860s.
Under the Constitution, as intended, there does not exist a private property right to discriminate against black people in business. That was totally and irrevocably removed by the 13th Amendment, and the 14th, and the 15th.
That the Supreme Court wrote the right back in there, so that the Supreme Court, a hundred years later, had to dig it all back out...by relying on the paltry Commerce Clause (instead of the express amendments designed to address this thing), is not to the court's credit. The reason there had to be a Brown v. Board of Education was because the Supreme Court gutted the Constitution in 1873 and in 1896, successively overthrowing the original, anti-racist intent of the Constitution, as amended.
Property rights ceased to have constitutional standing as a basis for discrimination based on race with 1865, with the 13th Amendment.
That point wasn't made until post #92 by rdb2
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