93 Percent of Jewish Population in U.S. Covered by Anti-bias Laws

A spokesman for the American Jewish Congress told a House subcommittee today that an estimated 93 percent of the Jewish population of the United States was covered by state anti-bias laws but that only 40 percent of American Negroes live in states with such laws.

Murray A. Gordon, a New York attorney, said that since World War II, states had passed laws outlawing job discrimination and set up state FEPC’s to enforce those laws. However, he said, while the record showed that such legislation could be passed and enforced at the state level, only national legislation “can deal with the problem nationally. State laws have been enacted in the areas where resistance to equality is weakest.”

He also told the subcommittee that while discrimination against Jews in employment was “a far less serious problem than that faced by Negroes and other groups,” there was still discrimination against Jews in “the employment market.” He quoted from a study by Karl R. Bopp, president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia, that “prejudice and outmoded attitudes” about Jews still existed in regard to banking employment in that city.

Mr. Gordon endorsed proposals to give permanent statutory status to the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and he urged the subcommittee to sponsor a bill to create a permanent Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity which would ban Job bias by all government agencies, all employers holding government contracts or federal grant funds and all labor unions dealing with such employers.