Court to Rule on Workplace Race Quotas

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to conduct a wide-ranging review of racial quotas in the workplace, announcing that it will hear two new legal challenges--one joined by the Reagan Administration--to employment plans that give preferences to minorities.

The court, beginning its 1985-86 term, said it will review an agreement between the city of Cleveland and black and Latino firefighters to assist minorities in obtaining promotions over whites with more seniority. The Administration, backing white unionists who objected to the agreement, says in a “friend of the court” brief that the plan unfairly favors minorities not personally the victims of job discrimination.

The justices also agreed to rule on lower court decisions requiring the sheet metal workers union in New York City to raise its minority membership to 29% and imposing a $150,000 fine for failing to meet quotas. The union says that the quotas are illegal and that they cannot be met because of widespread unemployment in the industry.

Michigan Case

Already, the court has agreed to decide this term the constitutionality of a voluntary agreement between school officials and teachers in Jackson, Mich., protecting less experienced blacks from layoffs.

The justices thus set the stage for a series of decisions by next summer that could have far-reaching impact on the hotly contested issue of affirmative action. Most major plans in the country give minorities preference as members of groups that have suffered historical, societal discrimination, rather than as individual victims of job bias.

The three cases now on the court docket will allow the justices to draw new lines clarifying the legal limits of minority-preference plans. In particular, the court will be able to expand on a much-debated ruling that it made in 1984 in a case from Memphis, Tenn., holding that federal civil rights statutes barred judges from ordering public employers to violate seniority systems to protect the jobs of blacks.

Interpreted Narrowly

The Administration has a heavy stake in the outcome. After the Memphis ruling, the Justice Department went to court in several cases, urging that the decision be interpreted broadly to prohibit race-conscious employment plans by public employers. But six federal courts of appeal since then have interpreted the ruling narrowly, saying it was restricted to court interference with bona fide seniority systems.

In the Cleveland case (Local 93 vs. Cleveland, 84-1999), a group of minority firefighters filed suit in 1980, charging discrimination by the city. The firefighters cited data showing that, while nearly half of the population belonged to minority groups, blacks and Latinos held only 4% of the supervisory positions in the Fire Department. Over objections from the predominantly white firefighters union, the city and the minority group agreed that half of the promotions in a four-year period would go to qualified nonwhites, even if it meant putting some of them ahead of more experienced white firefighters.

A federal District Court issued a consent decree approving the plan. Last January, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld that ruling, 2 to 1, finding that the high court’s Memphis decision did not bar voluntary, court-sanctioned affirmative action agreements.

14-Year-Old Dispute

In the New York case (Local 638 vs. EEOC, 84-1656), the union, involved in a 14-year-old discrimination dispute with federal officials, is challenging the court-ordered membership quota as invalid in the wake of the Memphis decision.

The justices, among the hundreds of cases they acted on Monday:

--Agreed to rule in an Arkansas case (Lockhart vs. McCree, 84-1865) that could sharply change the way that juries are selected in capital cases. At issue is whether a murder defendant’s right to fair trial is violated by excluding persons who are opposed to the death penalty from juries. Critics say such exclusion results in a jury that is too prone to convict.

--Said they will rule in a potentially far-reaching conflict between the authority of high school officials to uphold discipline and the right of students to free speech (Bethel vs. Fraser, 84-1667). At issue is a three-day suspension that administrators in Tacoma, Wash., sought to impose on Matthew N. Fraser for a speech containing sexual innuendo that he made at a school assembly in 1983.

--Agreed to decide whether, under federal civil rights law, an employer may be held liable for the sexual harassment of a female employee by her male supervisor (PSFS Savings vs. Vinson, 84-1779).