
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991                   TAG: 9102070099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CIVIL-RIGHTS BILL TACTICS CHANGED/ WHITE HOUSE ADDS HOUSING, SCHOOLS

Bush administration officials and civil-rights activists are employing new tactics as they resume the battle over a civil-rights bill that resulted in an angry stalemate last year.

The White House this time is taking the offensive, packaging its civil-rights proposal with education and housing initiatives in an attempt to broaden the debate from job-discrimination law to "individual rights."

Civil-rights activists, hurt last year by administration charges that their bill would encourage job quotas, plan to stress the benefits in their proposal for women and use the Persian Gulf war to highlight the question of fairness for minorities. If President Bush is willing to send a disproportionate share of blacks to the Persian Gulf, they contend, why is he unwilling to grant them protection from job discrimination?

Both sides, remembering months of tortured negotiations that eventually led to a presidential veto, are marshaling their arguments early. The bill supported by civil-rights groups is virtually the same as last year's proposal, except that it eliminates a compromise cap on monetary damages for intentional job discrimination.

One administration official said the White House will also propose tougher language than it offered during negotiations. "The Democrats have gone back to square one and so are we," the official said. But other administration officials said there is no final consensus.

The White House is expected to release a package next week that links a job-discrimination bill to programs to allow those in public housing to purchase their dwellings and to give parents more choice in where to send their children to school, among other initiatives. The theme is that affording people "opportunity" is the strongest civil-rights agenda, one official said.

Civil-rights groups want to significantly broaden the range of plaintiffs allowed to seek jury trials and monetary damages for intentional discrimination on the job; the administration objects to both ideas.

by CNB