Son of late billionaire Gary Winnick sues elite LA country club over allegedly being denied membership since his family is Hispanic: ‘A racial aristocracy’
The son of a late Los Angeles billionaire is suing one of the city’s most exclusive golf clubs, alleging he was denied membership because his wife and their children are Hispanic.
Matthew Winnick, a 42-year-old Jewish man, claims that the private Hillcrest Country Club — a historically Jewish organization — discriminated against his family by refusing his membership due to his family’s “Hispanic heritage,” according to the lawsuit, obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
“Hillcrest is a racial aristocracy, subsidized by the city,” the lawsuit claims.
Winnick’s attorneys, his brother Alexander Winnick and Anthony Trujillo, accused the golf club of nepotism and sheltering its 500 members from the racial diversity of Los Angeles.
Hillcrest’s attorneys have dismissed the lawsuit as “entirely without merit,” according to the Times.
The Winnicks are the sons of Gary Winnick, the deceased billionaire who made his fortune in the dot-com boom in the 1990s and rose to be one of LA’s wealthiest residents.
Gary Winnick was a long-time member of the golf club, whose members include Hollywood moguls, iconic celebrities and Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff.
“The late Gary Winnick, a long-term member, showed up at the ‘racist’ club regularly until the time of his passing,” Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Hillcrest’s president Jason Kaplan, told The Times in an email, noting that the Winnicks asked the club to host a memorial service for their father.
“Sounds to me like … what really seems to upset them [Matthew and Alex] is that they could not get into Hillcrest despite the alleged nepotism policy,” he added.
Winnick’s lawsuit claims that the club has violated California’s civil rights law as well as a Los Angeles ordinance that prohibits discrimination at facilities that receive money from nonmembers, according to the LA Times.
He argues that he was granted access to the club as an intermediate member for years, which he paid for. He applied for full membership in February 2023, and says he met all of Hillcrest’s requirements: 100 hours of community service, donating 5% of his available cash flow to charity and being deemed a moral and upstanding citizen.
The next month, Winnick claims Kaplan, who knew his family, yelled at his wife and kids to “¡Cállate!” — or “shut up,” in Spanish— at a birthday party.
Winnick later confronted Kaplan, who told him “You want to mess with me,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses Kaplan of making “racist remarks” and committing an unspecified sexual assault, which the document does not detail, according to the Times. Former club President Michael Flesch and board member Brad Fuller, a famous Hollywood producer, are also named in the suit.
In April Winnick wrote a letter raising his concerns about racial discrimination regarding his application with Hillcrest’s membership director. On May 1 he was told his application was denied.
Winnick alleges that Hillcrest has maintained an overwhelmingly white membership while paying an extraordinarily low property tax — only about $250,000 that otherwise would be taxed at around $70 million per year, according to the Times.
“There is a group of people who run Hillcrest as their personal fiefdom, violating the basic principles of fairness and equity,” Alex Winnick said in a statement to the Times. “Change is overdue.”
The three defendants named a plan to file their own retaliatory suits for malicious prosecution, according to the paper.
