ACLU Monitoring P&L Dress Code
By DAVID MARTIN
I joked in last week's column that the Cordish Co.'s only regret might be that the ACLU hasn't joined those criticizing the dress code in place at the Power & Light District. Turns out, the ACLU is getting involved.
Lisa Watson, an ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri board member, says she has been monitoring complaints and met last week with Councilman Terry Riley. Also, the local ACLU's executive director, Dan Winter, planned to meet with a Cordish official this afternoon.
ACLU officials sound as though they are prepared to take a hard line with Cordish and a dress code widely seen as racially divisive. Watson is helping to launch a racial-justice task force, and the P&L District will be one of the group's first priorities, she says. She suggests that Cordish will need to make changes in order to satisfy the civil liberties group. "We have some options available to us, including and up to litigation," she says.
The ACLU of Kentucky objected to a dress code Cordish enforced at a similar development in Louisville, saying it discriminated against blacks and the poor. Watson says the P&L District dress code -- which bans white T-shirts and long shorts, among other items -- represents "this huge overreach."
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