Our 501(c)(7) social club has a club member, a man in his 70s, who makes remarks to women in the club that make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. He hasn't physically touched anyone, but a number of the women have filed complaints to our ombudsperson who has investigated and reported to the Board. The Board has asked the member to apologize and warned him to refrain from such language. Since then he has been sending one-word emails from the Boy Scouts pledge (trustworthy, loyal, etc.) to the ombudsperson and she has filed a harassment complaint to the Board. We have written to him to cease these pointless emails or he might violate our code of conduct. He now says he has hired lawyers to lodge a harassment complaint against us. What should we do?
It sounds like time to invoke your disciplinary procedures to see if you can’t get this guy to stop bothering people or get thrown out of the club. The statement that he has hired lawyers (plural) may not be all bad. If he has hired junk-yard-dog lawyers, he is probably going to have to pay them a lot of money to prosecute a harassment complaint (that seems unlikely to prevail, even if a member can bring a harassment case, because your action is not based on harassment of a protected class) or to defend against the disciplinary action (in which victory would be unlikely to include a monetary award). Even if he is willing to pay the lawyers, publicity about the case is likely to reveal the member as the jerk you describe, and that is probably not his goal.
If you are lucky, he will have hired a lawyer interested more in resolving the situation than in creating a scene. A lawyer who wants to resolve the situation could help encourage the member to change his ways so that he can remain a member and no one feels harassed. I don’t know what your bylaws and rules say about conduct, but normally a social club and its members have final authority to maintain discipline and determine their membership. That’s your ultimate leverage. I wouldn’t be afraid to use it now.
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