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The co-founder of a Portland medical marijuana dispensary is accusing a Utah sign company of bigotry because it refused his business.
Ron Morse said his landlord suggested he ask Salt Lake City-based YESCO, which has offices throughout the country, to build a new electronic sign that would hang over the entrance of Human Collective in south Portland.
A YESCO sales representative visited, took photos and measurements and the two agreed on the image — the name of the business in black and white and a green cross that symbolizes medical marijuana, Morse said.
But then the Salt Lake City-based company declined to bid on the project for the dispensary, which had expected to pay about $10,000.
"When I pressed for a reason why, I was told it's because of what we do," Morse said Friday. "That's bigotry, that's discrimination. We are a state-licensed business. There is nothing wrong with what we're doing."
He noted that the company's website shows off massive electronic signs it has made for casinos in Las Vegas and elsewhere around the country.
"It's interesting how they are selectively moral," Morse said.
In a written statement emailed by Jeff Young, one of the third-generation brothers who run the family-owned company, YESCO said it carefully evaluates all requests for sign installation and advertising placement.
"We maintain a strong commitment to community standards and exert every effort to make the best decisions for our clients, our company and others who are within the wide geographic region in which we operate," Young wrote.
"We avoid projects that are likely to be interpreted as advancing sensitive social, religious, or political interests."
Atheists criticized YESCO in 2013 when it refused to lease its billboards for ads promoting last spring's national convention of American Atheists in downtown Salt Lake City.
Reagan Outdoor Advertising, another Utah sign company, also rejected the atheists' ads.
The company, originally called Young Electric Sign Co., was founded in 1920 in Ogden by Thomas Young, whose family had converted to the Mormon church in the late 1890s and emigrated to Utah when he was 15.
Within 12 years, the company had expanded to Las Vegas, and has created many of the iconic signs on casinos there ever since, according to the company website.
YESCO has created massive electronic signs for sports stadiums, as well as signs prominent on the Utah landscape, some of which can be seen on a timeline on the company's website. (YESCO also created The Salt Lake Tribune's sign on the Gateway building it leases.)
The company celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2010.
Morse said he does not plan legal action against the Utah company; an attorney told him there is no law requiring a business do business with marijuana shops.
"We're not a protected class," he said.
However, Morse said, the Oregon Legislature soon will debate a bill that would make it illegal for a business licensed in Oregon to discriminate against another business licensed in Oregon.
Human Collective, Morse said, has been a state-licensed business for more than 18 months. It had operated for more than two years without such a license before the Oregon Legislature legalized such dispensaries.
He estimates that 80 percent of his customers are over age 50 and suffer from cancer, glaucoma, Krohn's disease, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other maladies.
Oregon voters approved recreational marijuana last November, but the state does not intend to issue licenses for retail shops until next year and it likely will be mid-2016 before they open.
Morse said he intends to seek a license to sell recreational marijuana as well.
Twitter: @KristenMoulton