St. Helena Star

Jesse Duarte

Thursday, November 15, 2007

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Councilmember Eric Sklar asked the St. Helena City Council Tuesday to boycott the Meritage Resort at Napa because of its refusal to allow the National Abortion Rights Activism League to hold a convention there in January 2008.

But the council decided to hold off after an attorney representing Meritage threatened legal action.

Sklar said the city should adopt a policy of not paying for city officials to attend events at the Meritage. The city should also ask the county’s other local governments to adopt similar policies and not hold events at the Napa resort.

NARAL held a meeting at the Meritage last January to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and rally local support for abortion rights. When they applied for a reservation in July for another gathering in January 2008, the Meritage turned them down. “I’m not saying we should tell them what to do,” said Sklar. “I’m just saying that we don’t have to, with public dollars, support an organization which prevents some of our citizens from using its facility.”

Attorney Charles LiMandri, representing Meritage, said such an action would amount to a retaliation against the owners of the resort for exercising their rights.

Rather than a protected class covered by discrimination laws, such as race or religion, NARAL is “a highly political group that supports a controversial agenda that a lot of people don’t agree with,” LiMandri said.

The resort’s decision to host the 2007 NARAL event resulted in retaliation from a large segment of its customer base, said LiMandri. The decision to not host NARAL in 2008 was a prudent business decisions also based on “matters of private conscience,” he said.

LiMandri said Sklar’s proposed action would violate the resort’s constitutional rights and result in a lawsuit. “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” he said.

The council asked City Attorney Amy Valukevich to prepare a memo outlining the legal risks of adopting Sklar’s recommendation for discussion at the next council meeting.

Councilmember Joe Potter asked Sklar if he would request the same action if an anti-abortion group had been denied access to the Meritage. Sklar said he would stand up for any group that was being shut out because of its political beliefs.

“This may sound hyperbolic, but I’m Jewish and I believe that Nazis should be able to march down the streets of St. Helena if they want to because I believe the only way you defeat bad ideas is by full debate in public, not by prosecuting one group for what they say,” Sklar said.