First Female Rotary President Recalls Fight for Equality

Sylvia Whitlock traveled a long road to become the Southern California Rotary district governor-elect.

She started at her club in Duarte, CA, in 1982, but the bylaws prohibited women in the club.

Rotary International kicked the whole Duarte chapter out of the organization, so the outcasts got a lawyer and renamed their group the "Ex Rotary Club of Duarte," Whitlock said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Whitlock spoke at the San Clemente Sunrise Rotary meeting Tuesday morning.

She and her fellow ex-Rotarians fought Rotary International all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Whitlock said.

The final opinion shot down Rotary International's case and told the board it had to let Whitlock serve in the organization, paving the way for women in social clubs all over the U.S.

"It was a time when women's rights were being negotiated across the land," Whitlock said. "And that was the time it went into the courts."

The 1987 Rotary opinion in favor of Whitlock came one year after the Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson decision ruling sexual harassment as a violation of civil rights.

Rotary International tried to argue that forcing the club to admit women would violate its First Amendment rights to free assembly. But in the Rotary decision, the justices ruled:

"Although [Rotary] clubs engage in a variety of commendable service activities that are protected by the First Amendment, the evidence fails to demonstrate that admitting women will affect in any significant way the existing members' ability to carry out those activities.

"Moreover, the Act does not require clubs to abandon or alter their classification and admission systems, but, in fact, will permit them to have an even more representative membership with a broadened capacity for service."

Whitlock spoke to a packed room in San Clemente on Tuesday.

Rotarians, Rotary dignitaries and visitors from around the area came to hear Whitlock speak. President Rita Collins-Whitaker from the Avalon Rotary Club on Catalina traveled the farthest, according to club member Mervyn Lawrie.

Also at the meeting, the Sunrise Rotary presented a $4,200 check to Laura's House women's shelter,