High Court to Hear Cleveland Whites’ Challenge to Quotas

The Supreme Court, setting the stage for an important ruling on racial preferences in the workplace, today agreed to review a quota system for promoting blacks and Latinos among Cleveland’s firefighters, and also decided to study court-ordered quotas for union membership.

The court voted to hear a challenge to the Cleveland quota system by a predominantly white firefighters union. The challenge is supported by the Reagan Administration.

Today’s action expands the high court’s study of affirmative action plans attacked as “reverse discrimination.” The justices already have agreed to decide by July in a case from Michigan a related issue involving racial preferences: whether public employers--acting under union contracts--may protect black workers by first laying off whites with more seniority.

In the union case, the court said it will review lower court rulings requiring a New York-New Jersey sheet-metal workers union to raise its black and Latino membership to 29%, and imposing heavy fines for refusing to meet that quota.

Quota Not Met

Union officials said they had not met the quota in part because of hard economic times and higher unemployment in the industry.

In the Cleveland case, a federal judge issued a consent decree in 1983 requiring that about half the promotions in the Fire Department go to qualified minority candidates.

City officials and the Vanguards of Cleveland, an association of black and Latino firefighters, agreed to the racial-preference plan.

But the plan was challenged by Local 93 of the International Assn. of Firefighters, which said the system unlawfully discriminates against whites.

Last January, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the plan.

Written Tests Called Unfair

The Vanguards in 1980 charged that unfair written tests, manipulation of retirements dates and the city’s failure to hold an exam for promotions since 1975 fostered discrimination.

The group said that only 4.3% of firefighters with the rank of lieutenant or higher were black or Latino in a city where blacks and Latinos comprise about half the population.

The 6th Circuit court also noted that the quota system would be temporary, continuing for four years to raise the number of nonwhites in higher-ranking positions.

The appeals court also rejected the union’s claim that the quotas are barred by a 1984 Supreme Court ruling involving affirmative action in the Memphis, Tenn., Fire Department.

Flood of Cases

Acting on a flood of cases on the first day of the Supreme Court’s 1985-86 term, the justices also:

--Agreed to decide whether people opposed to the death penalty may be barred for that reason from serving as jurors in deciding guilt or innocence in capital cases.

--Set the stage for a ruling on free-speech rights by agreeing to decide in a Tacoma, Wash., case whether school officials may discipline a student who used sexual innuendo in a speech to fellow students.

--Agreed to decide in the case of an accused Czech spy whether people may be forced to testify against their spouses if both spouses are accused of participating in a crime.

--Let stand the conviction of former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for lying to Congress.

--Refused to force the federal government to compensate U.S. citizens whose land in El Salvador was seized by that government.

--Agreed to decide whether an employer may be sued when, even without its knowledge, a supervisor sexually harasses a worker.