Jon Del Arroz filed suit on April 16 against the 2018 Worldcon and other defendants in San Joaquin Superior Court asking damages for claimed violations of his civil rights under California’s Unruh act, and for defamation.
The named defendants are:
San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., aka Worldcon 76, David W. Gallagher (2019), President; David W. Clark (2020), Vice President; Lisa Deutsch Harrigan (2020), Treasurer; Kevin Standlee (2018), Sceretary; Sandra Childress (2019); Bruce Farr (2018), Chair; 2018 SMOF Con Committee; Cheryl Morgan (2020); Kevin Roche (2018), Chair; 2018 Worldcon (Worldcon 76) Committee; Cindy Scott (2018); Randy Smith (2019), Chair; New Zealand 2020 Worldcon Agent Committee; Lori Buschbaum; Susie Rodriguez and DOES 1 through 30, inclusive.
Del Arroz is represented by attorney Peter Sean Bradley.
The first 23 paragraphs of the Complaint lay out the history of Del Arroz’ banning by Worldcon 76 from his point of view, and allegations that he was banned because he is a Republican and Trump supporter.
Several of the causes of action quote from Worldcon 76’s announcement banning Del Arroz from the con, which said in part:
We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon. This expulsion is one step toward eliminating such behavior and was not taken lightly….
Repeated reference is also made to the committee’s email telling him he would not be allowed to attend, sent by Lori Buschbaum, the Incident Response Team area head. It is quoted in the Complaint as saying:
Jonathan, At this time we are converting your membership to Worldcon 76 to a supporting membership as you will not be permitted to attend the convention. On your personal blog you have made it clear that you are both expecting and planning on engendering a hostile environment which we do not allow, If you are found on the premises of the convention center or any of the official convention hotels you will be removed, Your payment of $50 covers the cost of your supporting membership in its entirety, and you have no balance owing. As a supporting member your nomination and voting rights for the Hugo Awards and site selection are maintained. If you prefer a full refund that can be arranged.
The Complaint outlines five causes of action, and in most cases leaves the requested damages to be determined at trial.
First cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51 (Unruh Act)
28. …Under the Unruh Act, a business establishment may not discriminate against any person based on a personal characteristic representing a trait, condition, decision, or choice fundamental to that person’s identity, beliefs and self-definition as that factor has been applied in previous cases. …The protection of the Unrush Act extends to political affiliation….
30. Mr. Del Arroz was discriminated against in violation of the Unruh Act in that he has been banned from attending Worldcon 76 based upon his political affiliation and political beliefs….
Del Arroz claims lost sales and emotional distress as a result.
Second cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51.5
This is a law against various forms of discrimination on account of characteristics such as “political affiliation.”
The Complaint says:
39. WorldCon 76 is a business establishment in that it holds itself out as open to the public without restriction and is using public facilities and engaging in public commcerce.
40. SFSF discriminated against, boycotted or blacklisted, or refused to contract with or sell to Mr. Del Arroz by refusing to sell him an attending membership because of his political affiliation and political beliefs. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the other named Defendants aided or incited this unlawful conduct.
Third cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51.7
The Complaint alleges violations of the law’s protection against “violence, or intimidation by threat of violence” because of a political affiliation (or other arbitrary discrimination).
The Complaint says:
49. On Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 5:01 p.m., Mr. Del Arroz received an email from Lori Buschbaum, who identified herself as the “Incident Response Team area head” for Worldcon 76 which stated in relevant part: “If you are found on the premises of the convention center or any of the official convention hotels you will be removed.” This statement constituted intimidation by threat of violence against Mr. Del Arroz because of his political affiliatuion in that Defendants and each of them threatened to have Mr. Del Arroz forced [sic] physically removed against his consent and acquiescence from locations he had a right to be in such as the lobby of a hotel. This threat was understood by Mr. Del Arroz to include violence in that Mr. Del Arroz had advised SFSFC of his concern about physical violence at WorldCon 76 and Mr. Arroz [sic] had been threatened with violence by members of SFSFC and individuals who had said they would be attending WorldCon 76 on social media maintained by SFSFC. At no time had SFSFC advised Mr. Del Arroz that he would be safe at WorldCon 76 and at no time did SFSFC make any effort to stop anyone from expressing a violent animus against Mr. Del Arroz on its social media sites.
Fourth cause of action Violation of Civil Code Section 52.1
After repeating verbatim paragraph 49 above, the Complaint alleges –
59. Mr. Del Arroz was threatened by SFSFC and Lori Buschbaum. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the remaining named Defendants aided or incited this conduct…. Individual Defendants and Does 1 through 30 aided, incited, authorized, ratified or conspired in the said discrimination, blacklisting, boycotting, and refusal to sell or contract with Mr. Arroz [sic] with respect to his purchase of an attending membership.
Fifth cause of action: Defamation.
Citing the January 2 email quoted above the Complaint alleges —
66. …Worldcon 76 never explained to him that anything he planned on doing would constitute a violation of any code of conduct. Mr. Del Arroz is informed and believes and thereon alleges that there is no such code of conduct. Further, Mr. Del Arroz is not a racist. Mr. Del Arroz has often made a point of condemning racism and proudly identifying his Hispanic heritage. Likewise, Mr. Del Arroz is not a bully. The statement that Mr. Del Arroz is a racist bully is false and SFSFC and its representatives knew t was false or made the statement with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the charge and with a malicious intent to injure Mr. Del Arroz or his reputation….
Financial damage is also claimed, likewise emotional distress. The Complaint also claims that the defendants —
were aware that they were threatening Mr. Del Arroz with physical violence in order to prevent him from exercising his important civil rights including the right of association and the right to use public property and the right to free and equal treatment by business establishments.
Del Arroz also wants court costs and attorney fees.
Below are copies of the documents filed with the court. The Complaint contains all the allegations and support,. The judge has scheduled the initial case management conference for October 15.
- CM010 Civil Case Cover Sheet
- SUM100 Summons – Civil
- Complaint
- Notice of Case Assignment Scheduling Information
Update 04/16/18: Corrected the info under the Fourth Cause of Action.
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On the subject of misspellings, I have completely lost track of the number of times people have misspelled my first name with only one ‘n’. I’ve taken to humor as a reminder and I tell them that the first ‘n’ is silent.
I would like to give a VERY respectful groan to Glenn Glazer. (Which, despite spellcheck, does not contain an “i”.)
@Mark-kitteh: thank you for keeping this thread on-topic, and I’m giddy about half of a minor internet fame. Or that might be the vodka.
Regarding the old “Donner” joke, I actually heard that over the loudspeaker at a restaurant once. “Donner, party of 6, uh… Donner, party of 5”. There was applause.
@Gwen 😉 I once only found out two people’s real names when the wedding invite came out and a mutual friend asked “Are you going to X and Y’s wedding?” Blink. Blink. I know no one of either of those names. Who? “Oh, SCA-name and internet-name!”
I worry now that I’ve stumbled onto the Florida/meteorologist/name thing, I may be targeted by… ummm… no, I’m not. Nobody except Filers care. 🙂
The Inevitable Filer Recursion:
A Meteorologist In Florida Named “Pixel Scroll”
@Jon —
You remind me of a family I grew up knowing, named Wiesmeyer — but pronounced “Wisemeyer”. Just to add to the confusion, one of the sons in the family changed his spelling to the more correct “Weismeyer”, so within the immediate family there were two different spellings!
Oh, man, don’t get me started on spelling problems. My surname is uncommon, but I share it with a famous brand and even so I have spent my entire life correcting the spelling. People always miss out a letter.
And as far as Meredith goes, I’ve been asked if I’m called Mary, Miriam, Martha, Mona… If it’s a woman’s name beginning with M, there’s a fair chance people have tried to use it. Although I’ve only ever been called by my sister’s M name by people who know both of us – as well as both of us occasionally being known as “Mireredith” by people who felt conflicted halfway through – as hers is also uncommon. Most common misspellings are ‘Merideth’ and ‘Meridith’. Doing so makes me grumpy. 🙂 The Anglicised spelling is phonetic (actually, I’m pretty sure the Welsh spelling is phonetic, too, just, you know, in Welsh) and yet…
A good chunk of my gamer buddies use my middle name since I figured out pretty sharpish that using a relatively obscure and long name was going to lead to me spending way too much time correcting the spelling. My middle name is only four letters long and reasonably common – much easier for people to cope with, whatever their facility with the common language or general spelling skills. Faster to type in emergencies, too.
@Lis Carey
I would certainly say Kerry and Carey very differently, but having recently been confronted (via game voice overs) with (an) American pronunciation of ‘salve’ and ‘squirrel’ I couldn’t hazard a guess how you’d sound to me when you say them. 🙂
Meredith: but having recently been confronted with (an) American pronunciation of ‘squirrel’
Oh, please, I’m dying here, please tell me how you pronounce squirrel, and what the American pronunciation you heard was — because the only pronunciations I can imagine are “skwirrel” and “skwarl”, or some close mashup of the two.
As someone from the Central Plains States (who spend 20+ years in Southern California), “Kerry” and “Carey” are pronounced exactly the same way (the same as “carry”). Even if I could hear a difference in how you pronounced them, I wouldn’t know which spelling to apply.
Lela E. Buis: ISTR that the plaintiff in the case we used to be talking about has Spanish family heritage, not Mexican.
The term he applies to himself is ‘Hispanic’, in which category a descendant of Spaniards qualifies par excellence, of course. The term is also interesting, in that it properly denotes a language-centric transnational culture (or cluster of cultures), rather than any specific ethnicity or nationality. For example, a friend of mine in Los Angeles always marks ‘Hispanic’ on government forms, because she grew up speaking Spanish as her first language while growing up in rural Bolivia, thus ‘Hispanic’ is a fully appropriate, correct classification for her even though she was the daughter of Danish missionaries.
Getting back to the name thing (yielding to peer pressure): I used to tease my now-late mother about the high likelihood of many other women running about with the exact name she had at birth, which was Gail Jacqueline Dawn Laverne Dorothy Lee Opal Faye [surname]. Sorry about omitting the exact surname, but I live in a country full of delusional people willing to accept ‘mother’s maiden name’ as a security identifier, which is quite absurd but the reality I have to contend with. That’s no more reasonable than accepting a Social Security Number as proof of identity, and for the same reason: It’s not actually very secret, and once revealed is blown for good.
At restaurants, I’ve been known to give ‘Ken Beseder’ as the name to call, just so, when they predict ‘it’ll take about 20 minutes’, I can say ‘Sure, OK.’ (Hey, a few polyglots will get the joke.)
@JJ
“Skwarl” is pretty close. It was jarring because the actress was otherwise pulling off a pretty decent English accent (which was quite pleasing because Blizzard has a very very bad track record for hiring people who can do any kind of British accent, Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins sort of awful), and then nope, weird slurred single syllable “skwhirl/skwarl” almost like they were gargling as they said it. I say “skwirrul”, ish. Probably. I’ve been saying it out-loud to myself and it no longer sounds like a word.
(Salve was “sav” whereas I definitely say salve-rhymes-with-valve.)
Rick Moen: I live in a country full of delusional people willing to accept ‘mother’s maiden name’ as a security identifier, which is quite absurd but the reality I have to contend with. That’s no more reasonable than accepting a Social Security Number as proof of identity, and for the same reason: It’s not actually very secret, and once revealed is blown for good.
That irks the hell out of me. I once sent an e-mail to a bank which offered me a choice of 3 out of 10 different set questions as security questions, demonstrating to them that every single answer for me could be found by someone with only a little more than the average skill at internet research. I’ll let you guess how far I got with that. 🙄
My solution was to come up with preposterous, memorable-but-absolutely-unGooogleable-and-unguessable answers to some of the standard questions. I won’t forget the answers, but no one else is going to be able to reverse-engineer them.
My favorite security question, which was at an AV vendor: “What is your favorite security question?”
In general, I prefer those that have free text for both question and answer, but I will point out that nothing requires you to tell the truth in the answers. You just need to remember what you gave them the first time.
I didn’t grow up on 0001 Cemetery Lane, but there is a website that thinks I did. 😉
@Glenn Glazer: “My favorite security question, which was at an AV vendor: “What is your favorite security question?””
LOL, now that’s a security question!
Skwrl. Skw’rl. Skwur’l. Skw(schwa)rl. Skwurul. Technically it’s two syllables but usually it’s one to one and a half.
@Rick–
I usually provide my GRANDmother’s maiden name when I get this question. If anyone is so anxious to break into my account that they take the time and trouble to figure that one out, they deserve to get in. 😉
@Glenn–
And I very rarely provide my actual address or birthdate, unless the site in question reaaaaally needs to know those things. Likewise my phone number and real name.
Most of the time, sites are only asking for this info so they can sell it to advertisers. I have no compunction about lying to them.
P.S. I’m cracking up about squirrel, because I was just telling someone earlier today that my dogs were out barking at the Evil Squrls. It’s definitely squrls here. ;-D
All squrls are evil.
ISTR that a few years ago in one of the discussion thread on Bruce Schneier’s blog, there was something of a contest to write the best, most absurd, security or password-reminder question/answer pairs. There was a great deal of conceptual humour predicated on the notion of being read the question by a customer service representative and needing to give the matching answer. E.g.:
Q: What are you wearing?
A: I’m not comfortable with you asking that, and need to speak to your supervisor.
Personally, I just go for whatever is maximally surreal.
@Lyle–
*shudder*
Carey, Kerry, and carry are all pronounced differently. In New England, we speak Propah!
Unlike, you know, people everywhere else.
Even in 4367.
As a side note on spelling — when people ask me about my last name, I tell them (before spelling it out) “The maximum consonant version”, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fit in more consonants than I have. 🙂 As many, easily, but not more…
For me, Kerry has a short ‘eh’ (like in ‘bed’) and a short ‘y’ (like ‘e’), Carey has a long ‘air’ and a softer ‘ey’ (almost ‘ree’ I think – kair-ree or care-ree), Carry has a short ‘ah’ (like in ‘cat’) and a short ‘y’ (like ‘e’). All different to my ear, although Kerry and Carry are closer to each other than Carey. For people who say two or all of them the same, what do they sound like?
@Meredith —
They’re all “kair-ree” to me!
@Meredith–
Yes! Exactly!
Well, at least for the first syllable of each. In New Englandish, the y in Kerry and carry isn’t as short as I think you’re indicating.
And here I thought a SQURL was how one reached and interacted with a database over the internet.
As for security questions:
Q: What did you want to be when you grew up?
A: Older.
Q: Where were you born?
A: Blue radishes.
Q: What was the make and model of your first car?
A: I’m Amish.
I’m with Contrarius on the various carries (and marries). I say keh-ree. I can make a first syllable kay sound, and do for Karo syrup, but not for any of those words.
I don’t distinguish cot and caught, either. I mean, I can make the sounds, if pressed, but I am not sure which is which.
My family is from Atlantic Virginia, but I never lived there. Oddly, I did live in the Boston area for four years, but not til I was six, and apparently I never acquired the accent. I was quite hearing-damaged by that time (measles), and didn’t get my first hearing aid til I was 15, so that’s probably why.
@Contrarius: Yeah, that’s kind of what happened in my family, except it took place over two hundred years ago. Big Mennonite clan in Pennsylvania, and my ancestor would have to be the one out of seven surviving adult sons who decided to Anglicize the original German family name weirdly.
Come to think of it, I’ve had less trouble in recent years, ever since I realized how many people in my area know the NATO phonetic alphabet. For some reason, if I spell it “Zulu-Echo-India-Golf-Lima-Echo-Romeo” people always get it right. Something about making sure a different set of neurons gets involved in the other guy’s brain, perhaps.
Re: passwords and password questions – My bank bought another bank during the height of financial the bubble some ten or eleven years ago. I went to put in my banking password to check whether something had cleared, shortly after that happened, and got an “invalid password” notice. Confused, I called the bank, and was told that passwords could only include numbers and letters; it couldn’t include symbols (!@#$%^&*). Like the symbols that were in my bank password. Apparently when they folded in the other bank into their system, they decreased the security of the passwords of everyone with an online bank account, by removing ten characters from the dataspace….
One website asked for “first address” for a security question. I put it in and was told it was invalid; no character could repeat more than twice. Which boggled my mind; have they never SEEN addresses? Plenty of people live at places like 444 North Elm Street or 1111 East Main Street. Including, as it happens, me as a child. Fancy that; I lived at an invalid address for twenty years and didn’t know it….
I pronounce the various “carry”s the same too. And as Lenore suggested, Mary, marry, and merry are identical. I would have expected the New England pronunciations to drop at least one of the r’s out! 😉
I pronounce there, their, and they’re differently. Realising that other people don’t was a revelation: Oh, that’s why people mix them up as often as they do!
And squirrel has two syllables!
I pronounce your and you’re differently. Which is why I’m amazed at how many times a day I see those swapped. For me your is the same as yore, but you’re kinda/sorta rhymes with lure.
Yup, me too. For you’re (and they’re), it’s like I don’t completely blend the two words together.
@Laura–
Mary, marry, and merry are all pronounced differently, here. As are your and you’re, and there, they’re, and their.
It is difficult to drop an ah at the staht of a syllable. 😉
Although, it must be confessed, it can be difficult to distinguish, in New Englandish, the sounds of ion and iron. 😀
I say carry etc all about the same, I say squirl or on really lazy days skirl when I’m on the street seeing them or making jokes about being easily dist –squirl! And I already linked to Great Big Sea for the Mary question.
I try to enunciate more when talking to my kids (so they understand it’s a squir-rel), on new jobs or job interviews, or in formal situations. On some of which I’ve then had people try to place my accent. Uh, same, just slower and more pronounced. Literally.
My mother in law says “sahve”. I can’t. It hurts. There’s an L right there.
My mother descends from family that can be traced by the imigrant’s name from his generation (b 1715) to the present. In addition to the male line, almost all of the daughters (granddaughters, ggranddaughters, etc.) in the family named a son after the immigrant, which then passed down. We know when we find a string of men named G_____ M_____ LastName, we’ve found a collateral line.
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@Lis
My husband is from Rhode Island and I’m from Michigan. Most of the time we can understand one another. Sometimes his father and I need him to translate. 😀
@ Lenora Rose,
Do you pronounce the L in halve?
There was a Ren & Stimpy episode about an aggressive salve salesman, and half of my snickering was from the way he pronounced it with the L in. I’d always heard it like the first syllable of “savvy.”
Do the people who pronounce the ‘l’ in ‘salve’ pronounce the ‘b’ in ‘subtle’?
Inquiring minds want to know.
What about the l in salmon?
@Lenore —
Oooo, good point. I definitely do NOT pronounce those words the same as Karo. So “keh-ree” is probably more accurate!
@Glenn, @Dennis, @Lenora —
Hey, I grew up pronouncing the “l” in “salmon”. ;-D
eta — ninja’d by Laura!!
@Glenn:
Forget the B in “subtle.” Around these parts, we frequently don’t pronounce either B in “probably” (which only has two syllables).
On the “mother’s maiden name” security question: I generally give them my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Easy to remember, harder to connect to me, though not a common name. (It’s a family that’s nearly daughtered-out: only a few boys in the last few generations.)
Rev. Bob on April 22, 2018 at 9:03 am said:
That’s prolly true in other areas. Though I’ll admit to having grown up on Pogo, and having a father who was an Okie, and to having lived in west Texas for four years, all of which warped my otherwise-vanilla California pronunciation in ways that a few people can hear, but I can’t.
I’ve heard (and even used) ‘prolly’ before. It always sounded British to me.
I heard ‘prolly’ a lot when I lived in Pennsylvania, along with roads being ‘slippy’ in the winter rather than ‘slippery’.
Pronunciation:
Carry, Kerry, Carey, are all pronounced the same for me, as are caught and cot. But then I’ve been living in California since before high school.
The l in salve, yes, but not in salmon. Your and you’re are identical. No b in subtle, but probably, yes, or prob-ly.
@Meredith: a difficulty with your Kerry/Carey differentiation is that “air” isn’t a simple vowel; it’s sometimes “eh-eer”, sometimes “eh-err”, sometimes a form I can’t trivially represent — and all of these can get munged when followed closely by other sounds. I \think/ I have 3 pronunciations for the triplet, but it would be interesting to test what a sample of New Englanders think when I’m conversing rather than demonstrating — or how a sample of non-NEers would hear Lis’s pronunciations in conversation (per past discussions that phoneme boundary distinction is personal rather than rigorous).
@Dennis Howard: Do you pronounce the L in halve? Or calve? (Less common outside of farming and arctic precincts — but global warming means we’re talking a lot more about iceberg generation.) Worse, my mind’s ear hears the ‘a’ differently when imagining “sallve” (shading toward father rather than fat) vs “savve”, but I have no memory of hearing either spoken; it wasn’t common in any of the space/time tuples I’ve lived in. (“Ointment” was typical.) Adding fat to the fire: how do you pronounce “salver” (simple noun, not noun-from-verb.) Yes, it’s antique (probably more so than “salve”, but I still read Sayers occasionally.) Now, how do you pronounce “silver salver”?
@Chip Hitchcock: When and where I grew up ‘salve’ [pronounced without the L] was the common spoken word. ‘Ointment’ was less common. I have no experience with ‘salver’. I have no idea how to pronounce it. 🙂
For me, ‘calve’ (from ‘calf’) drops the L, as does ‘halve’ (from ‘half’). All consistent with ‘salve’.
@Various: You all talk funny. 😛
Don’t get me started on the “l” in “salmon.” I took me years to get my better half to drop that! 😉
I thought “salve” was either “sal-vay” or “sal-way” . . . oh, wait, you mean we’re not talking about how to pronounce it in Latin??? 😛
I’m not sure if I say “probably” or “prob’ly” (which autocorrect helpfully keeps changing to “probably,” heh). Both sound okay to me! Hmm. Methinks I lean a bit more towards “prob’ly,” but I’m not sure when/why/if I would vary the pronunciation, or if I’m just so used to hearing both, both sound right even though I only use one. ::confused::
Okay, how do you pronounce “robot”? I use the IMHO standard-these-days roh-baht, but my mom used to say it rah-but (schwa in second syllable), which I found totally weird, growing up! (IIRC over time, she started saying it like everyone else I knew.) [ETA: She doesn’t have occasion to use the word much, so I’m not sure how she’d say it now.] Anyway, I believe it’s [ETA: rah-but] an older/outdated pronunciation. Not sure I’m describing this clearly.
I just caught myself with two distinct pronunciations for salve; one as a noun and one as a verb. You put a savv (rhymes with “have”) on someone to salv (rhymes with valve) their wounds. Possibly because I’ve heard people say salve-noun as savv… but only ever read it in verb form.
Mary/marry/merry are all one sound to me, but I can’t grok “cot/caught” as the same sound. That’s like having “bot” and “bought” as the same vowel. (One is “ah” and the other is “aw”.) I also pronounce “which” and “witch” slightly differently; I do aspirate the wh. It’s subtle, (no b), however, and I don’t know that listeners notice.
Caramel sometimes is “cahr-mel” and sometimes “care-a-mel” and I don’t quite know what peculiar rule my brain follows to make that happen. Except that if the sugary treat is fancy, it’s more likely to get three syllables. I think.
Route is sometime “rowt” and sometimes “root”; as best as I can tell, the verb is rowt and the noun is root. “If you want the best rowt to my house, take Root 20…”
@Chip —
Salver has the “l”, salve does not. Because a salver is not actually a thing with which to dispense salve.
@Cassy —
Yeah, I can see that distinction. Hmmm.
To me, all of those have the same vowel — cot/caught/bot/bought
For me these are definitely different, though I think most commonly around here they are not.
Always three vowels for me. 🙂
Your example actually has both spellings as a noun. 😉 A better example would be something like “rowt the truck through Root 20”.
Interesting question about “route”, though. I can hear both pronunciations for both noun and verb forms. Hmmm.