“Ladies Night” bar discounts are unconstitutionally discriminatory. At least in New Jersey.
The state’s top civil rights official has ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on “ladies nights,” agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men.
David R. Gillespie said it was not fair for women to get into the Coastline nightclub for free and receive discounted drinks while men paid a $5 cover charge and full price for drinks.
In his ruling Tuesday, J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the state Division on Civil Rights, rejected arguments by the nightclub that ladies nights were a legitimate promotion. Commercial interests do not override the “important social policy objective of eradicating discrimination,” he ruled.
What’s interesting is that similar suits in Pennsylvania and Iowa have reached the same conclusion, but courts in Illinois and Washington have ruled the opposite way (claiming that the discrimination is not intentional, but merely an effort to get women into bars).
I don’t know. If I claimed I wanted to get more white people into my bar by offering them an occasional discount not available to blacks, I suspect someone might (rightfully) object.
(via Hit&Run)
Back in the Eighties, several bars in the Denver Area got in the same fix. The change was to call them “Skirt Nights”, and anybody that wore a skirt got free drinks.
It was odd how piping bands tended to show up during those nights
Personally, I think whoever brought the case was mad because they couldn’t get laid.