The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith expressed “strenuous objection” today to a New York State Civil Service Commission questionnaire that it fears could be “misused to foster preferential employment without regard for merit.” Applicants are asked to indicate their ethnic group, which “has a chilling effect on those who apply, for it implies that the racial or ethnic factor may be a determining factor in choosing or rejecting among applicants,” Commission president Ersa H. Poston was advised in a letter from Milton A. Seymour, chairman of the ADL’s New York Board.
The form says that under state law, applicants may be asked to submit “confidential” ethnic information “voluntarily” for use “only for research.” This “distortion” of the civil service programs, Seymour said, is “destructive of equal opportunity and violative of federal and state constitutions and state laws.”
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