Pine Valley Golf Club settles gender-bias complaint. What's going to change?
TRENTON – Pine Valley Golf Club has agreed to spend $200,000 and make multiple changes to resolve a gender-bias complaint brought by a state agency.
The settlement includes a $100,000 payment to the state’s Division on Civil Rights and a $100,00 endowment for two scholarships to promote women’s participation in golfing, officials said.
Pine Valley, long considered one of the country’s most exclusive golf clubs, also agreed to change discriminatory workplace and housing practices, according to a statement from the DCR.
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In an April 2022 complaint, the DCR alleged the 108-year-old club improperly banned women from membership and restricted their ability to golf on its famed course.
Those restrictions had been lifted in 2021, but "only after DCR commenced its investigation of the club," the statement said.
Pine Valley must change hiring, housing practices
The club’s general manager, Charley Raudenbush, declined to comment.
Under the settlement, the club is prohibited from relying on word-of-mouth recruitment as its “primary method” of filling jobs.
That practice had led to women representing less than 4 percent of Pine Valley’s workforce and typically “in positions that did not interact with club members,” the statement said.
It said future job openings must be “equally accessible” to all genders and at least 75 percent are to appear on “at least two major online job-posting websites.”
Pine Valley to fund scholarships under bias-claim settlement
It also said the club could no longer forbid its staffers from discussing their pay or prohibit male employees from wearing earrings.
The club also is restricted from leasing or selling homes on its property “based on gender or club membership status,” the statement said.
It noted the club previously prevented women from owning homes without a male co-owner.
The settlement calls for an eventual end to residential use of club property.
It says current residents can bequeath homes to a spouse or child, but the club is to buy homes as they come up for sale and repurpose them for another use.
Pine Valley operated as its own municipality until year-end 2021, when it became part of the adjacent borough of Pine Hill.
The payment to the DCR represents $50,000 ''in lieu of penalty" and the same amount for the state's attorneys' fees.
One of Pine Valley’s scholarship donations will be made to a fund operated by the Golf Association of Philadelphia to support the education of female caddies.
The other will benefit members of the women’s golf team at Rutgers University.
Pine Valley is to submit annual reports to DCR “to ensure continued compliance with the settlement agreement,” the statement added.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Tmes and The Daily Journal.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Pine Valley Golf Club funding scholarships to settle gender-bias claim
