Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 23, 1993 TAG: 9302230071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
HIGH COURT WILL RULE ON ANTI-BIAS LAW
The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide whether a 1991 civil rights law that Congress wrote to give workers greater protection from employment bias applies to thousands of claims that were pending at the time.A decision on the retroactive reach of the law, passed to undo several rulings by the conservative high court, is expected next year.
The justices will use two cases, from Texas and Ohio, to study the issue, which is being closely monitored in both the business world and the civil rights community.
The cases could give the Clinton administration's Justice Department an early opportunity to depart from predecessors in the Bush administration.
Bush lawyers had argued in other cases that the Civil Rights Act of 1991 should not be retroactive, a view that "reflected the position of Republicans, but not Democrats, in Congress when the act was passed," said Stephen Ralston of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
"We will suggest to the Clinton administration it would be highly appropriate for them to wade in on the side of good and justice and tell the court the act applies to cases pending when it was passed," Ralston said.
The two civil rights cases selected by the court stem from a Texas woman's 1989 sexual-harassment lawsuit against her former employer and from two garage mechanics' 1987 racial bias suit against their ex-employer.
In the Texas case, Barbara Landgraf sued USI Film Products after working at its Tyler production plant for 16 months.
Before she quit in early 1986, Landgraf worked the overnight shift as a machine operator making plastic bags. Fellow employee John Williams subjected Landgraf to what a federal judge called "continuous and repeated inappropriate verbal comments and physical contact."
Lower courts found Williams' conduct significant enough to make the plant a "hostile work environment" for Landgraf and make her employer liable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But those courts also ruled that Landgraf was not entitled to back pay because she could not prove she reasonably felt compelled to quit.
The dispute from Ohio began when Maurice Rivers and Robert Davison sued Roadway Express Inc. The two longtime employees, who worked as garage mechanics, were fired in 1986.
Their lawsuit accused Roadway Express of racial bias, but the case was dismissed after the Supreme Court in 1989 limited protections offered by a Civil War era anti-discrimination law to hirings, not on-the-job bias.
The court, returning from a four-week recess on Monday, also:
Refused to revive a lawsuit against the Navy by Nancy Lewis of Northville, Mich., mother of a sailor killed with 46 shipmates in a 1989 explosion aboard the USS Iowa.
Ruled unanimously in a case from Yosemite National Park in California that people charged with drunken driving in national parks or on other federal property have no constitutional right to jury trials.
Refused to let environmentalists sue the government in a nationwide case over alleged failures to regulate the strip-mining of coal.
Rejected a bid by rock 'n' roll great Chuck Berry, 66, to have some of his legal battles moved from state to federal court. Berry's lawyers had said an alleged conspiracy against him in Missouri courts amounts to "an economic lynching of a uniquely American cultural icon."