I tell college students that nearly every college in America allows same-sex partners to share a dorm room, but they almost all prohibit opposite sex couples from doing so. This is true. The students virtually all cry out, “That’s not fair.” Then I explain that they now know what it feels like to be a gay or lesbian couple in America.

And the latest example of such bias involves Birgit Koebke and her domestic partner, Kendall French, who are avid golfers. They are yet another San Diego lesbian couple to battle in the courts for the same rights accorded married couples.

Earlier this year, A lesbian couple sued and won when a medical facility refused them fertility services. Another lesbian couple filed suit recently because they were refused their right to adopt a child.

In 1987, Birgit Koebke purchased membership in the Bernardo Hills Country Club. She initially paid $18,000 for one of 325 memberships and now pays $650 each month in dues and related expenses.

In 1994, Koebke asked the club for family golfing privileges, the same ones other families receive. At the time, the couple provided the club with proof of their ties, including common ownership of their Tierrasanta home, powers of attorney for health matters, and being executors and beneficiaries of each other’s wills. Presumably, now the couple has registered with the secretary of state as domestic partners.

According to the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the club denied them family privilege because, of course, they are not married. If it provided them with family privileges, then it would have to extend privileges to all members who had a significant other.

So each time Koebke’s partner wants to play golf, French has to pay greens fees, she can’t play more than six times per year, and if Koebke dies, she can’t inherit her membership.

If Koebke and French were married, French would enjoy the same privileges Koebke has. Considering Koebke pays $650 to the club, and cannot marry, she ends up subsidizing the married couples at the club.

When the couple was not extended family benefits, Koebke sued the club under the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code sec. 51), as well as the City of San Diego Municipal Code.

The Unruh Act, as interpreted by court cases, prohibits business establishments from engaging in discrimination based upon, among other things, sexual orientation.

The club doesn’t contest that it’s a business establishment under the Unruh Act. It contends that it can use marriage as a dividing line for membership privileges.

A San Diego Superior Court judge found that Koebke and French were subject to bias based upon their marital status, but the judge said it was fine. The club treated all unmarried couples the same. He found marital status bias to be lawful under the Unruh Act.

On appeal, the couple contends that, even if the club treats all unmarried couples the same, the practice discriminates against unmarried couples and sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, marital status bias is not necessarily unlawful in California. California law allows insurance carriers to engage in marital status discrimination in pricing. Single people pay more for insurance than married people. Gay couples cannot get family policies from all insurers.

Yet employers cannot prefer married employees, landlords can’t prefer married tenants, and cities in California cannot exclude unmarried couples from living in areas zoned for single families.

In my view, the California Supreme Court should find that martial status bias violates the Unruh Act because it almost always works against single people.

Almost 20 years ago, the California courts declared that the state’s civil rights law protected gay and lesbian couples against discrimination, even though federal law does not explicitly do so.

In a landmark case, two lesbians, Zandra Rolon and Deborah Johnson, sued Walter Kulwitzky, the owner of a posh Los Angeles restaurant. The restaurant refused to seat the two lesbians in a semiprivate booth because the business reserved those booths for “two people of the opposite sex.” The business only allowed opposite-sex couples in those booths. Even an opposite-sex couple with children couldn’t sit in those seats.

The restaurant owner argued that he couldn’t seat same-sex couples in the booths because he had to protect his customers from “acts of intimacy” between homosexuals.

The court recognized that gays and lesbians can’t be subject to such bias, especially in Los Angeles, which, like San Diego, has an ordinance specifically outlawing bias against gays by businesses.

The court found no reason for the policy because the restaurant could have seated gay couples in areas where “their conduct was open to observation.”

More critical, the court said it was “unable to conceive of any conduct that the restaurant could reasonably fear might offend the sensitivities of the most prudish patron.”

And there’s no reason why a domestic partnership should be treated any differently from a marital unit.

Regardless of what occurs at the court of appeal, there’s no question that the issue of martial status bias is headed for a showdown at the California Supreme Court and in the California Legislature.