Rep. John Heinz III (R.Pa,) called on Attorney General Charles Levi today for an opinion on the constitutionality of a California plan that would abet Saudi Arabian discrimination against Jews and others, Heinz told Congress yesterday that California “has been put in the position of literally ignoring and possibly violating our own civil rights laws to accede to the diversionary whims of a country that only recently had clothed itself in moralistic robes and led the fight to declare Zionism racist.”
The Pennsylvania legislator was referring to a project announced by the California State Department of Transportation to help unemployed members of that department get jobs building roads in Saudi Arabia. The state officials reportedly said that such jobs would not be open to Jews. Blacks or women because they are unacceptable to the Saudi government.
Gov. Edmund Brown, Jr. of California, who assailed the plan, has meanwhile ordered a halt to job negotiations with the Saudians until they promise no discrimination against Jews, Blacks or women. A spokesman for the State Transportation Department said today it was complying with the Governor’s orders. He said a cable would be sent to Saudi Arabia demanding “affirmative assurance” that there will be no discrimination in hiring highway engineers and technicians. The California state agency is faced with the prospect of laying off 2800 employes by next July because of a cutback in highway construction.
Heinz said that if the Justice Department does not see the California plan as violating any Civil Rights Act provisions, he would offer legislation that would make such actions illegal, “We must not allow the hypocrisy of other nations to soil our own hard-won civil rights gains,” Heinz told Congress.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
