UPDATE: A lawyer representing The Desert Sun Resort in Palm Springs has requested dismissal of the establishment's lawsuit.
Original 3-23-2012 post: Orange County's Elizabeth and John Young bought one of the premier Palm Springs nudist resorts in 2008 and, given obviously valid worries about pedophiles, thought they were doing the right thing three years later when they instituted a “no kids” policy.
But last month a lawyer sent the Youngs a letter threatening a lawsuit on behalf of anonymous individuals demanding financial damages if they insisted on enforcing the “no-kids” and “couples-only day pass” policy at their Desert Sun Resort.
]
Attempts by the Youngs' lawyers to get the law firm of Slovak Baron & Empey LLP to reveal the identities of their clients and to describe the specific instances of alleged discrimination weren't successful.
And
now we have what may be the first preemptive lawsuit in the history of
American nudist resorts. That's right. The Youngs felt they had no
choice but to file their lawsuit this week in Orange County Superior Court.
Thomas A. Vogele, the couple's lawyer, is asking Judge Linda S. Marks to declare the resort's no kid and couple only day pass policies is in alignment with California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Slovak Baron & Empey have not yet filed a formal response to the lawsuit.
The
Desert Sun Resort owners claim they hosts approximately 10,000 nudists
annually. Though not required, guests are allowed to be nude at the
resort's bar, restaurant, three swimming pools, tennis courts, fire pits
and relaxation areas. Public sexual or aggressive behavior is strictly
prohibited, according to resort rules.
Though most visitors are “middle aged couples seeking a quiet vacation,”
the resort says it doesn't discriminate on the basis of sex, race,
national origin, disability, marital status or sexual orientation.
Stay tuned on this one.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.