Agnes and John Donahue own a five-unit apartment building in Downey, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles. They also are devout Roman Catholics who believe that sex outside marriage is a mortal sin.
The Donahues believed that it would be sinful for them to facilitate fornication by renting to an unmarried couple. They didn't want to be put into a position of what they believed would be "eternal, divine retribution" by doing so.
Terry and Wilder believe that they were treated unfairly and charged the Donahues with discrimination under state fair housing and civil rights laws.
But the Donahues claimed that their state constitutional right to free exercise of religion excused them from the statutes.
Now, in a widely watched case, the California Supreme Court will decide whether the Donahues are entitled to assert their religious beliefs to keep out tenants they don't want. A state court of appeals says they can. The dispute has pulled religious and civil rights groups into the debate.
Larger issues are at play, however. The state supreme court will have to grapple with the clash of religious beliefs and privacy and free-association protections. No hearing date has been set.
The state supreme court's decision could stand as a benchmark and set an example for other courts nationwide to follow in similar cases. Other courts have spoken and they have ruled in favor of landlords, mostly because of laws that prohibit cohabitation. California has no such law.
If the Donahues win, it would open the door to discrimination suits in housing and the workplace against, say, women who have an abortion, gay and lesbian couples or individuals who use drugs or alcohol, according to some attorneys.
"Enforcement of the fair housing laws would be almost impossible," said Thomas F. Coleman, a Los Angeles attorney who is representing Terry. "The crazier the belief, the more protection people would get to either not rent or evict somebody," he said.
Thomas F. Donahue, the Donahues' son as well as their attorney, disagreed. "This is not a far-reaching case," he said. "It has very narrow applications."
Donahue said a favorable ruling would only apply to landlords who share his parents' religious belief that sex outside marriage is a sin.
He noted that discrimination on the basis of marital status already exists in the state of California, pointing to a legal loophole that allows colleges and universities to establish special housing for married students.
The emotionally charged case has drawn attention from an eclectic mix of religious and civil rights groups, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund to a coalition of 21 organizations representing Mormons, Baptists, Jews and Christians, among others.
For them, the problem is not so much whether sex out of wedlock is morally right or wrong, although clearly the religious right stressed the Republican theme of family values in friend-of-the-court briefs filed on behalf of the Donahues.
The problem, as it turns out, is over the argument of California Attorney General Daniel E. Lungren to throw out the appeals court decision, handed down last November.
The appeals court granted the Donahues an exemption from both the state fair housing and civil rights laws, overturning a decision by the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission. The court found that the statutes infringed on the Donahues' religious practices, even though it held that the fair housing law protected unmarried couples from discrimination.
Lungren is asking the California Supreme Court to adopt the legal analysis in Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court case that made it much easier for governmental bodies to override claims of religious freedom. The Smith decision was viewed by many as an immense step backward for religious liberty protections.
In that decision, the court found that First Amendment religious freedom claims do not justify breaking laws that apply generally to people and are neutral on religion. The decision prohibited Native Americans from using peyote in religious rituals.
Lungren's argument does not satisfy groups on the right or left, be they religious or public interest.
Fred M. Blum, president of the American Jewish Congress for the Northern Pacific Region, filed a brief in the case supporting the would-be tenants, but also said the group does not want the Donahues' religious freedom abridged.
Blum said, "Smith has been a disaster on a national level and we don't want to see that disaster brought into the state of California."
Jordan W. Lorence, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Donahues, said, "Because {state officials} want the Donahues to lose, they're basically wiping out religious liberties for everybody else.
"I say, that is swatting a gnat with an atom bomb," said Lorence, who also represents a Christian widow who is a landlord charged with housing discrimination in Chico, Calif.
Kathleen W. Mikkleson, a state deputy attorney general, said that ending housing discrimination is the compelling legal reason to protect unmarried couples. Unfortunately, she said, the housing commission took a narrower view and defined the reason to support the would-be tenants as eliminating marital-status discrimination.
While the debate rages on over which way the California Supreme Court will rule, Terry said she has broken up with Wilder, partly the result of the stress brought on by the case.
She said she is renting from friends and that Wilder is in San Diego, where he bought a house. But Terry is not distraught. "We're still friends," she said.
