By Michael Miner
The case is still pending, the file is fat, and a hearing is scheduled for March 3. Last October the Tribune changed the policy that had guided it in January, tacitly acknowledging that Nancy Jean Marback’s death notice might have been handled better. But in its briefs the Tribune argues in effect that the First Amendment gives it the right to be wrong. It maintains that the Chicago Human Rights Ordinance doesn’t apply in this case and that any harm Marback suffered was self-imposed.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
She remembers the family sitting around Nancy Marback’s kitchen table when the Tribune called back. Bill Marback, who’s an attorney, answered the phone. “They asked him who Lee was, and I heard him say, ‘Oh, he’s my brother Bob’s wife.’ And they asked who Steven was. ‘Oh, he’s my brother Tim’s husband.’”
Bill Marback told the family that the Tribune had said the paper couldn’t print the death notice the way it was written because it was afraid of losing readers. This made no sense to the Marbacks. Who would read it but the family friends the Marbacks were buying space to inform? Those friends knew all about Tim and Steve.
The notice of Nancy Marback’s death appeared as written in the Sun-Times.
Marback’s lawyers asserted, “The First Amendment does not allow the Tribune to practice unlawful discrimination. The Tribune’s policy of requiring qualifying language within parentheses in death notices for same sex couple [sic] constitutes unlawful sexual orientation discrimination.”
One struggles to imagine a more egregious First Amendment violation.”
