Stupid Frigging Fool By Roy Den Hollander Part 8 Ladies’ Night Christmas Eve 2006, bitter cold, and I’m standing in line with Mark and his younger brother waiting to get into club “Deep” on West 22nd Street. As we shiver, the girls in fashionable nothings strut to the head of the line, ignoring us, and enter for free—it’s “Ladies’ Night.” Guys have to pay $20 and wait in the cold until the doorman allows them the privilege of paying to enter. In effect, the men are financing the girls’ partying because the guys make up the price the girls don’t pay. Mark’s brother grumbles, “How cum they get in for free, and we have to pay? Not just to get in, but to buy them drinks. They’re the ones who live for sex; they should be paying us instead of acting like hos.” The other guys in the line agree, and a case from law school pops into my head: Seidenberg v. McSorleys’ Old Ale House, Inc., 317 F. Supp. 593 (1970). In 1969, a couple of PC-Feminazis from NOW, the National Organization of Witches, walked into McSorleys’ Ale House on the lower Eastside. The bar didn’t have a doorman to stop them, just a policy of “men- only”—given the trouble girls often cause after a few drinks bought by some sucker. The bartender refused to serve them and escorted them to the door. The federal court in Manhattan ruled that the State’s involvement with McSorleys’ business was significant because of pervasive regulation by the state of the activities of the defendant, a commercial enterprise engaged in voluntarily serving the public except for women. Furthermore, the state has continued annually to renew defendant’s license over the years despite its open discrimination against women, without making any effort in the exercise of the broad authority granted it, to remedy the discrimination or revoke the license which defendant must have in order to 1 practice [discrimination]. [T]he state’s regulatory power in this area is far broader than in the case of an ordinary lawful business essential to the conduct of human affairs. Because the State was pervasively involved, Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment applied, so McSorleys’ sex-discrimination was declared unconstitutional for treating guys and girls differently, and the bar had to open up to girls. Club Deep’s Ladies’ Night and all the other nightclubs in the City holding Ladies’ Nights were just as pervasively controlled by the State as McSorleys’ but treated guys differently than girls—a guy had to pay money to enter a club while a girl did not. Looked like a potential lawsuit for fighting against the discrimination of men and preferential treatment of females—the real objective and result of PC-Feminism. So I filed the idea away, and my buddies and I went to another club that was free for both sexes that Christmas Eve. In May the following year, Mark and I were standing outside the club Taj on West 21st Street, which the Police closed to traffic on Saturday nights because there were so many clubs overflowing with partiers. He was trying to call the hostess inside the club, a Swedish blonde to whom I had introduced him, to see if she could get us in for free. In the middle of the street were a hot black haired girl and a blonde, so while he dialed away on his mobile, I walked over and tried to pick them up. April, the black haired girl, was luscious. The discussion somehow came around to Ladies’ Nights, and I told them of my idea to sue clubs for discriminating against guys. April said, “And where will you find the time to bring such a suit. You lawyers are always busy.” She was right, and by that I knew she was dating a lawyer, which was probably why she didn’t relinquish her phone number—she had her sucker hooked. At that particular point in time, however, I did have the time, so in June 2007 I filed a sex discrimination lawsuit in the U.S. Southern District Court of New York against a handful of 2 nightclubs running Ladies’ Nights. That was the same court that had decided the McSorleys’ case. With the McSorleys’ case as precedence, I thought I had a sure winner, since the only difference in the cases was that guys instead of girls were discriminated against by bars and nightclubs that the State “pervasively” regulated. In addition, my case presented an argument not used in the McSorleys’ case—bars and nightclubs were carrying out a public or state function, so equal protection of the Constitution applied. The Constitution only applies where the government is involved, whether federal, state, or local. “[W]hen private individuals or groups are endowed by the state with powers or functions governmental in nature, they become agencies or instrumentalities of the state and subject to its constitutional limitations.” Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 299 (1966). Government involvement or state action may be found in situations where an activity that traditionally has been the exclusive, or near exclusive, function of the state has been contracted out to a private entity. Jackson v. Metro. Ed. Co., 419 U.S. 345, 352 (1974); Horvath v. Westport Library Ass’n, 362 F.3d 147, 151 (2d Cir. 2004). Guess what activity the states have always had exclusive control over—alcohol. The power of the state to control not just the sale and consumption of alcohol but the circumstances in which such occurs is an exercise of the ultimate sovereignty of a state. See Crane v. Campbell, 245 U.S. 304, 308 (1917). New York chose to delegate some of its exclusive functions to bars and nightclubs for operating premises where persons could purchase and consume alcohol. Bars and nightclubs, therefore, exercise a public or state function by which they are entirely dependent upon state decisions to operate successfully, See Flagg Bros., 436 U.S. at 158-59, so equal protection under the Constitution applies. 3 I also thought the media would ignore the case because the issue was discrimination against men. The media, however, jumped all over it and me. But I enjoy being pilloried by public opinion—a sure sign that one is right as H.L. Mencken would say. The real surprised, however, came in court before Judge Miriam Cedarbaum at the preliminary conference. Judge Cedarbaum, an avowed PC-Feminist, started by laughing and mockingly saying, “This is an unpopular case.” To which I agreed, and responded, “So what, popularity has nothing to do with constitutional rights.” The hearing went downhill from there with Cedarbaum interrogating me the way TV talk show hosts do their non-PC guests. She’d ask one question that I’d start answering, then interrupt with another, so I’d start answering that one, then she’d interrupt with another, and all the time I was trying to get back to finish my answer to the first question but never did because the questions and interruptions kept coming. Cedarbaum’s questions were based on papers that one of the defendant nightclubs had submitted a few days earlier as part of its motion to dismiss; that is, to throw the case out in the first inning. Under Cedarbaum’s rules, oral argument on that motion to dismiss was not scheduled to occur for another three weeks so as to give me time to put together my papers and arguments in opposition to the defendant’s motion. Preliminary conferences, unlike oral argument on a motion to dismiss, are used for case management, to set the case’s schedule and determine what issues can be settled. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly for a PC-Feminist, Cedarbaum treated the preliminary conference, for which I had all of one day’s notice, as the oral argument on the motion to dismiss. Cedarbaum and the defendant nightclubs had obviously laid a trap for me, 4 figuring they could intimidate me into withdrawing the case by assuming I would not have any counter arguments or cases, since oral argument on the motion to dismiss was not for three weeks. But they goofed. Little did she or the nightclub attorneys know that I knew more about the law for this case than they. The turning point in the conference came when Cedarbaum hostilely declared, “You have no authorities for this case!” “Oh yes I do!” and I cited not only the McSorleys’ case, but a U.S. Supreme Court case that had used the McSorleys’ case—cases that the female defense attorney had left out of her papers, since they didn’t support her position. Something lawyers aren’t suppose to do, but then when did a PC-Feminist ever follow the rules. Cedarbaum ignored my cases at first, and said in a mocking fashion, “Are you a lawyer?” She knew I was, since I was admitted to the Bar of the Court where she was a judge and my complaint said as much. Enough was enough, and I replied, “I move that you disqualify yourself from this case for bias toward me, bias toward the class of men that I represent and failure to recognize cases that are more relevant than those cited by the defendants.” That put her back on her Feminist heels, and she then asked for the citations to the McSorleys’ case and the U.S. Supreme Court case. Later on with some civility, she said, “You must respect me.” To which I replied, “I do, but you also have to respect me.” That 40 minute battle, in which the defendants’ attorneys said virtually nothing, reminded me of arguing with a girl that I had gone out with too long.