Howe

Plaintiffs and appellants William Howe, Richard Boss and Bashir Ghazialam, acting on behalf of a putative class of “individuals of U.S. national origin and/or ancestry, as well as naturalized individuals,” sued Bank of America N.A., Mexicana Airlines and Visa International Service Association (collectively Bank of America). Their com plaint was that these entities had discriminated against the class in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civ. Code, § 51 et seq.) by requiring that United States citizens provide a Social Security number to open a particular type of credit card account, while allowing foreign nationals to open such accounts with only alternative forms of identification.

Bank of America demurred to the complaint, arguing it was required by federal law to obtain Social Security numbers from United States citizens seeking to establish credit card accounts; that federal law did not require banks to obtain Social Security numbers from foreign nationals; and that requiring such numbers from foreign nationals would effectively preclude those who were not eligible to obtain Social Security numbers from opening accounts. Given those circumstances, the policy of…