Behind the Headlines: ADL Says Amendments to Its Policy on Quotas Are “not Startling”

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith will continue to argue against quotas and “preferential” treatment in the work place based on race, gender or ethnicity, despite recent amendments to its longstanding policy of opposition.

According to ADL officials here, recent actions taken by the agency’s National Executive Committee represent only “modifications” of the organization’s basic opposition to quotas as a means of ensuring equal opportunity.

The group will continue to support “non-preferential” affirmative action plans, which call for programming other than “setting aside” a set number of positions for members of a particular minority group or gender.

Two resolutions amending ADL’s affirmative action policy were adopted at a meeting of the agency’s National Executive Committee meeting in Chicago Oct. 26-Nov. 1.

One resolution says that court-ordered preferential relief, which ADL traditionally has opposed, is appropriate under certain limited conditions.

These include cases where there has been a long history of “systematic and egregious discrimination” and where training, recruitment and other “non-preferential” remedies have been unsuccessful.

A second resolution says that in situations where there is a “substantially segregated” workplace, the ADL will uphold a private sector employer’s consideration of race, gender or ethnicity as one factor in choosing among equally qualified applicants.

CODIFIES ‘OPERATING POLICY’

The policy amendments are “not a startling departure,” according to Justin Finger, associate national director of ADL. The first resolution “codifies what has been operating policy,” he said.

Finger cited the ADL’s support during the 1970s of the court-ordered integration of the Alabama State Troopers, which had been found to be systematically excluding blacks from its ranks. Finger describes that practice as an example of “egregious” discrimination.

Regarding the private sector resolution, ADL officials cited as an example their support of a recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of Diane Joyce, an employee of California’s Santa Clara County Transportation Authority.

In that case, a county employee named Paul Johnson claimed that he had become a victim of sex discrimination when Joyce had been promoted ahead of him, despite scoring lower in an internal rating. The court upheld Joyce’s promotion, saying that the county’s affirmative action plan addresses “a conspicuous imbalance in job categories traditionally segregated by race and sex.”

According to Larry Levinsky, a member of the ADL executive committee and former chairman of the group’s National Civil Rights Committee, Joyce’s promotion could not be considered “preferential,” because she and Johnson seemed equally qualified.

“Do we really want to be in a lawsuit where we say to an employer who hired his first woman. you discriminated against men?” said Levinsky.

Major Jewish groups have voiced their opposition to quotas since the 1960s, when courts first began to order employers to set aside positions for minorities as a remedy to job discrimination. As early as 1964, the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and other groups were calling quotas “anathema” while supporting other affirmative action programs.

The groups were responding in part to the historical use of quotas as a means to limit the number of Jews and other minorities in universities and professions. While quotas confer a benefit on one race, the groups argued, they impose a disability on another.

In 1974, NJCRAC amended its opposition when it called for “specific goals and timetables,” in which employers must demonstrate “good faith” in recruiting minorities and women.

Other groups, including the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress, followed suit. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations was more supportive of quotas. The ADL, however, remained intransigent in its opposition to quotas of any kind.

Two cases in the 1970s brought Jewish opposition to a head, precipitating an unprecedented collision between Jewish groups, on the one hand, and black leaders and civil rights groups on the other. In DeFunis vs. Odegaard (1974) and in Bakke vs. University of California (1978), Jewish groups filed briefs on behalf of white students at a law school and medical school, respectively, who claimed they had been victims of “reverse discrimination” due to the schools’ admissions quotas for minorities.

‘CEILING’ OR ‘FLOOR’ TO ASPIRATIONS?

In 1984, Vernon Jordan Jr., former president of the Urban League, told the New York Chapter of the AJCongress, “Many Jews see quotas as a ceiling to their aspirations; blacks see quotas as their floor.”

The ADL filed a brief opposing quotas as recently as 1986, in a case in which the Supreme Court struck down a program by the Jackson, Mich., school board in which white teachers were laid off before minority group members with less seniority.

But while opposing quotas and preferential treatment, the ADL has long called for affirmative action programs that stress training, education, vigorous recruitment efforts and court-ordered fines or penalties against employers who discriminate.

“Quotas are inimical to the merit system,” said Levinsky. “They distract attention from the real problem, which is working with young people to see that they don’t fall out along the way.”

Civil rights groups maintain, however, that while they support all programs designed to allow minorities to compete on equal terms in the workplace, the government and private employers have failed to implement the sort of “non-preferential” affirmative action programs the ADL describes.