Employment Discrimination a Factor in Groups Backing Civil Rights Bill

President Bush is threatening to veto a landmark civil rights bill that some Jewish groups are backing to help victims of employment discrimination win legal relief.

Bush opposes both the House of Representatives version of the Civil Rights Act of 1990, which was approved 272-154 on Aug. 3, and a strikingly similar Senate version approved last month.

The president warned before the House voted that attempts to modify the House bill, sponsored by Rep. Augustus Hawkins (D-Calif.), “would not result in a bill I can sign.”

The congressional bills reverse or modify five 1989 Supreme Court decisions on the application of laws prohibiting job discrimination.

In addition, they would extend for the first time the possibility of compensatory and punitive damages to those discriminated against because of their sex, religion or national origin.

Bush wrote House Minority Leader Robert Michel (R-III.) that he is “convinced” the Hawkins bill “will have the effect of forcing businesses to adopt quotas in hiring and promotion.”

Most Jewish groups, with the exception of Agudath Israel of America, believe language that makes it easier to challenge employment practices will not result in hiring or promotion quotas.

Agudath Israel opposed the bill because it believes it will lead employers to impose quotas, which have long been inimical to Jews. Before World War II, many Jews here were denied employment or promotions because of such quotas.

Despite benefits Jews might receive, the primary reason why Jewish groups supported the bill is their secular commitment to civil rights, evidenced by their membership in the 185-member Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

SUBSTITUTE BILL REJECTED

Bush had urged the House to adopt a substitute civil rights bill, sponsored by Rep. John LaFalce (D-N.Y.), which resorts to a different test for an employer to prove a hiring or promotion practice was “required by business necessity.”

As adopted, the House and Senate bills define business necessity as bearing “a significant relationship to successful performance of the job,” language taken from the 1971 high court decision in Griggs vs. Duke Power. That decision, eroded by 1989 court rulings, placed the burden of proof on the employer.

AJCommittee, in a letter this spring to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who sponsored the Senate bill, argued that “before the court reversed its position last June, the Griggs precedent stood for nearly 20 years, without resulting in racially based numerical quota systems.”

AJCommittee and other Jewish groups opposed LaFalce’s definition of business necessity requiring the employer to prove the discrimination “has a manifest relationship to the employment in question or that the (employer’s) legitimate employment goals are significantly served” by the practice challenged.

Judith Golub, AJCommittee’s legislative director, said the “manifest relationship” phrase was made moot by including the legitimate employment goals phrase from a 1989 court ruling.

Golub said that language would have “codified” the court’s ruling in that case, which placed the burden on the employee to disprove the business necessity for the practice.

The House defeated the LaFalce measure 238-188. Only three of the five Jewish House Republicans voted for it: Reps. Willis Gradison Jr. (R-Ohio), John Miller (R-Wash.) and Steven Schiff (R-N.M.). They also opposed the Hawkins bill.

Two moderate Jewish New York Republicans, Reps. Benjamin Gilman and Bill Green, opposed the LaFalce bill, as did all 26 Jewish Democratic House members.

CAP ON PUNITIVE DAMAGES

The Senate on July 18 approved the Kennedy bill 65-24. Unlike the House, the Senate did not vote on a compromise measure. It was withdrawn by its sponsor, Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.).

The Key difference between the House and Senate version is that the House, to placate some opponents of the Hawkins bill, set a cap of $150,000 for punitive damages.

Golub of AJCommittee said her group does not support the cap “because we think it’s inequitable. There’s something offensive about a cap.” But she said it was one of the compromises that had to be reached to gain passage of the bill.

Bush said the cap amendment does “nothing to cure the bill’s defects.”

While opponents of the Hawkins bill were invoking Bush’s name to urge its defeat, supporters such as House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) reminded colleagues that it was 25 years ago Aug. 6 that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Foley, who gave the final speech during the two-hour debate, received a standing ovation from the bill’s supporters when he concluded, “Twenty-five years from now, we will look back on this date with pride and satisfaction.”

But Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) called the measure a “lawyers’ get-rich bill,” and argued that if a local work force is 35 percent black, no more blacks would be hired, because then an employer “won’t have enough Asians.”

On another discrimination front, the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a non-binding resolution that calls it “inappropriate” for federal judicial nominees and Justice Department appointees to be members of discriminatory private clubs.

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith hailed the measure.