Ari Ryan and other young leaders of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces gathered on the afternoon of July 11, 2010, at the Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica for a charitable event.
Soon after the party got underway around the hotel's pool, apologetic hotel staff and security guards began telling group members to remove their literature and banners, to get out of the pool and hot tub, and to stop handing out T-shirts, according to Ryan and court documents.
The employees were acting on the orders of hotel owner Tehmina Adaya, according to the statements of witnesses and hotel employees in court documents. Adaya is a Muslim woman of Pakistani descent.
Alleging that they were the victims of discrimination, Ryan, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and 17 other individuals later filed suit against Adaya and the hotel under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which says no business establishment may discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color or religion. In addition to Adaya, the suit names Indus Investments Inc., the corporate owner and operator of the hotel.
"This was one of the worst days of my life," Ryan said recently, recalling the events of that day. "I had not experienced anti-Semitism.... In Santa Monica in the new millennium, it was astonishing this was happening."
In court documents, Adaya said the July event had not been scheduled with the hotel and that the participants were trespassing on hotel property. Philip E. Black, an attorney for Adaya, declined to comment.
A jury trial is slated to begin Monday in Santa Monica Superior Court. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 million in damages.
According to the lawsuit, the charitable event was for the Legacy Program, a branch of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces that raises funds to send children of fallen Israeli soldiers to summer camp. The party was planned by Platinum Events, a marketing firm that had organized other gatherings at the Shangri-La after the property underwent a $30-million renovation and reopened in mid-2009, the complaint said.
Ryan, 37, a real estate entrepreneur who lives in Westwood, said as he and others arrived about 11 a.m., hotel personnel set up a rope and stanchions and a check-in table.
"The event started very smoothly," Ryan said. The hotel was expecting a large crowd, Ryan said, including a projected 150 people for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces event who were to wear blue wristbands.
About 12:30 p.m., he said, "we were asked to take down our literature and banners. The hotel removed our rope and stanchions and guests' towels. Anyone wearing a blue wristband was asked to get out of the swimming pool and hot tub."
"They were told they weren't allowed to have banners, that literature was not permitted in the pool area, that the pool was only for hotel guests and that the pool was overcrowded," said James Turken, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
As the afternoon wore on, several members of the group became upset and left. The head security guard attempted to negotiate a resolution between Ryan and Adaya, Ryan said.
"It was my intent and the group's intent that, as long as we were there and knew we belonged there, we were not going to be forced out because of who we were and what we believed in," Ryan said.
The two sides reached an agreement about 3:45 p.m., Ryan said. The hotel agreed to restore the group's rope and stanchions, the check-in table and sign, pool privileges and towels. Ryan said he left about 20 minutes later.
After Ryan and other plaintiffs filed suit in December 2010, Adaya filed a cross-complaint, alleging that the participants had trespassed and become raucous. In June 2011, at Adaya's request, the cross-complaint was dismissed.
Adaya, 48, who lives in Santa Monica, is a daughter of Ahmad Adaya, a real estate tycoon and philanthropist who helped found the New Horizon School for Muslim religious education in Southern California. He died in 2006.
After the Shangri-La reopened, the Santa Monica Conservancy honored Adaya for the restoration of the Art Deco-style hotel on Ocean Avenue. "She was exceedingly gracious to us and invited us to the hotel," said Carol Lemlein, the conservancy's president. The conservancy has many Jewish members, Lemlein said, and Adaya, who often attends meetings, "gave no indication she was uncomfortable."
In a deposition, Nathan Codrey, who was assistant food and beverage director of the Shangri-La at the time of the gathering, stated that Adaya told him the day of the charity event: "I don't want ... any Jews in my pool." About two months after the incident, Codrey was fired, he said in the deposition.
Ryan said he pursued the case partly to honor his late grandfather, Zev Karkomi. Born in Ukraine, Karkomi narrowly escaped capture by the Nazis in 1941, but most of his family members were killed. He moved to Israel in 1942 and served as a captain in the Israel Defense Forces. "I felt the weight of standing up to what he had to live through," Ryan said. "On my grandfather's grave … we did nothing to incite this hatred and bigotry."
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, said the "question for the jury is going to be: Why did she kick them out?"
"Was she excluding them because of their being Jewish, or was she excluding them because they didn't follow rules of conduct and deportment?" he said. "If she kicked them out because of religion, she violated the Unruh Act."
