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7-SERIES

Walking A Tightrope On
The Civil Rights Bill

Jewish groups sought to balance their
support for civil rights legislation with
their opposition to quotas.

JAMES D. BESSER

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Washington Correspondent

C

an the Jewish com-
munity balance its
strong desire to pass a
major civil rights bill with
its abhorrence of quotas?
Those concerns were put to
the test last week in a flurry
of Jewish organizational ac-
tivity over the House
passage of a modified ver-
sion of the Civil Rights Act
of 1991. The bill seeks to
overturn a series of recent
Supreme Court decisions
making it more difficult for
employees to sue employers
for job discrimination.
Last-minute changes
designed to counter ad-
ministration claims that the
legislation is a "quota bill"
may have exacerbated the
very problem they were in-
tended to correct. As a
result, Jewish support for
the bill is in jeopardy.
This produced a frantic
round of negotiations among
civil rights leaders, mem-
bers of Congress, and Jewish
organizations — with much
attention focusing on the
Anti-Defamation League,
whose strong aversion to
quotas had made it the one
major Jewish organization
opposed to the legislation.
The House passed the civil
rights measure by a vote of
273-158 — a big margin of
victory, but not enough to
guarantee override of the
promised presidential veto.
From the outset, the ad-
ministration argued that the
bill would encourage
employers to use a kind of de
facto quota system to avoid
lawsuits based on the new
civil rights legislation — a
view most Jewish groups re-
jected.
In a last-ditch effort to sw-
ing a veto-proof majority,
Democratic leaders in the
House added several provi-
sions specifically outlawing
quotas.
But to outlaw quotas, some
legislators argued, quotas
themselves needed to be
defined with some precision.
The result was hastily
crafted language that
defined quotas in what many
Jewish activists see as a too-
narrow way - - something
that could actually increase
the likelihood that the bill
would result in quotas.

Abe Foxman:
Played a key role.

A second provision man-
dates that nothing in the bill
should be understood to con-
tradict any previous
Supreme Court decision on
affirmative action.
But Jewish groups have
not been happy with all of
the Court's decisions on the
controversial subject — most
notably, with the Weber
decision, a 1979 Supreme
Court ruling that supported
voluntary racial-based
quotas to eliminate racial
discrimination.
Supporting a civil rights
bill with this provision, some
Jewish activists fear, would
give added legitimacy to
high court decisions that
they strongly oppose.
This unexpected turn of
events put the squeeze on
Jewish organizations like
the American Jewish Con-
gress and the American Jew-
ish Committee that have
been among the civil rights
bill's most active supporters.
Some expressed pleasure
that the House bill passed,
but said that if there were no
changes in the Senate ver-
sion, they could not support
the bill.
The Anti-Defamation
League had been the target
of strong pressure from the
White House in its efforts to
derail the bill with the quota
charge.
Last week's modifications
sparked an intensive
reevaluation of the bill at
ADL headquarters.
"We felt from the beginn-
ing that there was need for
legislation — but with
caveats," said Abraham