SALEM, Ore. (Legal Newsline) - An 18-year-old woman has the right to buy a rifle from a gun store under Oregon’s anti-age discrimination law, an appeals court ruled, overturning a lower court decision that found public health and safety concerns trumped the broad language of the statute.
Brandy Dalbeck sued Bi-Mart Corp., claiming the store refused to sell her a hunting rifle because she was under 21. The trial court granted Bi-Mart summary judgment, finding that while Oregon law generally prohibits discrimination against 18-year-olds, there could be an exception for guns.
The Oregon Court of Appeals disagreed. In an Oct. 13 decision, the court’s majority reluctantly ruled that the law covered any transactions that weren’t specifically prohibited by statute. The age-discrimination law prohibits 18-20 year-olds from buying alcohol and marijuana, for example, and other statutes prohibit them from renting cars, playing video lotteries or serving on the board of an insurance company.
“We do not question that defendant’s policy is the product of its desire to prevent or reduce the tragic losses suffered by families as a result of gun violence,” the court said. “We, as a court, are not empowered to craft an exception to the legislature’s bar on age discrimination that the legislature itself did not write.”
The trial court found the law contained “implied exceptions” for public health and safety, particularly involving sales of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and firearms.
The appeals court rejected that reasoning, citing the clear language of ORS 659A.403. The law states people “of age” “are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”
There was still some question of whether “of age” means 18, the court said.
“This is not an instance where the legislature has supplied an easy answer,” the court acknowledged. But “despite this oblique approach,” the court went on, the term “of age” is defined in another law as 18. The exceptions for alcohol and marijuana for people under 21 also suggest the legislature otherwise included 18-year-olds in the age discrimination suit, the court said. Finally, another section of the antidiscrimination law, ORS 659A.406, prohibits anyone from aiding and abetting a place of accommodation in discriminating against people “18 years of age or older.”
It wouldn’t make sense for legislators to bar other people from assisting places of public accommodation to discriminate against 18-year-olds while allowing those places to do it by themselves, the court noted.
The store also disputed whether Dalbeck had standing to sue because it said she hadn’t actually tried to buy a gun. The appeals court said that was a factual question that must be left to the jury.
Judge Jacqueline Kamins, concurring, called the statute “befuddling” but said “what is clear is that the legislature did not contemplate its use to safeguard the sale of firearms to teenagers.”
The age-discrimination statute is the result of a “rushed effort” to comply with a statewide ballot measure legalizing the sale of marijuana, the judge wrote. Lawmakers deleted the phrase “18 years of age” from the law, he said, and the appeals court’s decision effectively inserts the language back in.