Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 15, 1990 TAG: 9005150035
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The White House softened the veto threat the Justice Department aimed at the bill last month but still expressed misgivings about what it regards as hiring quotas imbedded in the legislation.
Bush spent more than an hour with the black leaders - twice as long as planned. Hooks and others said afterward they agreed to have their top legal advisers meet with Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Dunne and White House counsel Boyden Gray to search for a middle ground.
"The president would like to sign a civil rights bill, and we will be working toward that end," White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said before the meeting. He said "we are not repeating" the veto threat.
But Drew Days III, a Yale Law School professor who was the Carter administration's top civil rights lawyer, said, "There is a tremendous gap that has to be bridged."
The administration agrees with the civil rights establishment that some of last year's Supreme Court rulings that narrowed minority workers' rights in job discrimination cases should be reversed.
But the Bush administration does not want to go as far as the bill now before Congress or give women some protections that minorities now enjoy. Bush has backed efforts to reverse two high court rulings; the civil rights leaders want to undo six.
Hooks called it "a question of paramount importance to the black community."
"The civil rights bill, in my judgment, will become a litmus test" for the president, who currently enjoys "a tremendous popularity" among blacks, Hooks said.
John Jacob, president of the National Urban League, said Bush "has used the White House as a bully pulpit to preach justice and fairness and equality, and we saw this legislation as an opportunity to put into action [those] words."
Alixe Glen, a deputy White House spokeswoman, said "There is room for negotiation . . . [but] there are certain principles that won't change."
The White House remains concerned that the legislation would put a burden of proof on employers "so great that the only way of staying out of court is to have a quota," she said.
Bush will hold two more listening sessions Wednesday with leaders of Hispanic groups, Asian-American, women, religious organizations and the disabled. White House Chief of Staff John Sununu is meeting separately with business and labor groups.
Arthur Fletcher, the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, defended the bill, saying, "It's not a quota."
"A quota is a flat number that has to be satisfied irrespective of whether the person can do the job. . . . All businesses pursue goals," said Fletcher.
by CNB