Layoff Plan Favoring Blacks Voided by Court : Narrow Ruling in Teacher Reverse-Bias Case Doesn’t Curb Affirmative Action in Workplace

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down as unconstitutional a local school district plan providing special job protections for minority teachers--but the justices left the way clear for employers to adopt affirmative action programs in the workplace.

The court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld the reverse-discrimination claims of a group of white teachers from Jackson, Mich., who were laid off under an agreement between the district and the teachers’ union that protected blacks from layoffs even if they had less seniority than whites.

The majority agreed that the layoff plan violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution and said that affirmative action programs must be carefully drawn and may not be justified merely by a general “societal discrimination” against minorities.

Five Opinions Issued

But language in the five opinions issued by the justices strongly indicated that narrowly tailored minority-preference plans, based on clear evidence of past discrimination by the public employer involved, would still be upheld by the court. Minority preferences in hiring and promotions were not directly at issue--and there was no indication that Monday’s ruling would undermine such programs.

Significantly, the justices did not retreat from previous rulings upholding affirmative action plans in employment and education--and they stopped far short of accepting contentions by the Reagan Administration that such plans must be restricted to helping only actual, identifiable victims of discrimination.

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., writing the court’s plurality opinion, said the court recognized that, to remedy the effects of discrimination, it sometimes may be necessary to take race into account.

‘Innocent Persons’

“As part of this nation’s dedication to eradicating racial discrimination, innocent persons may be called upon to bear some of the burden of the remedy,” he said.

The ruling was made in the first of three cases on the court’s current docket that have attracted wide attention and may chart the future course of affirmative action in employment.

Still to come by July are two other decisions. One involves a challenge by white firefighters to a federal court-approved settlement between black firefighters and the city of Cleveland establishing promotion quotas for minorities. The other is on a court-ordered membership quota imposed on a New York union found to have improperly excluded minority applicants.

Monday’s ruling seemed characteristic of a court that, over the years, has followed the middle of the road on the politically volatile subject of affirmative action.

Previous decisions have struck down rigid minority quotas in college admissions and barred courts from overturning municipal seniority plans to protect less experienced minority members. But other rulings have upheld voluntary private minority-preference training programs and affirmed federal law setting aside part of public works funds for minority-owned businesses.

Reaction to the decision was immediate and widespread, and both sides in the nationwide debate over race preferences in employment expressed at least some satisfaction.

The Justice Department, which backed the white teachers in the case, called the decision a “significant advance for the proposition that all of us, regardless of race, have civil rights that are protected by the same constitutional standards.”

‘Not Good Enough’

“The court makes clear that you simply can’t say there is general society discrimination,” department spokesman Terry Eastland said. “You can’t give that as your reason for engaging in an affirmative-action plan. That’s not good enough.”

But Eastland agreed that the decision’s impact probably will be limited. And the Administration’s allies in the case agreed that the ruling was far from sweeping.

“It’s an important case,” said Justin J. Singer, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which had sided with the Administration. “But it is still based on a specific situation involving layoffs where there was no (previous) finding of specific discrimination.”

E. Richard Larson, an attorney with the ACLU Legal Foundation in New York, said that the ruling essentially affirms the court’s 1978 Bakke decision, in which it held that a medical school discriminated against a white applicant by denying him admission while accepting black students with far lower entrance-exam scores but approved the use of race among other factors in determining college admissions.

Some civil-rights lawyers were buoyed because the court chose to rule narrowly in a case in which actual damage to the white teachers--the loss of jobs so that minority jobs could be saved--was obvious and unarguable. Such “discharge” cases are among the most difficult to win, one said.

Another attorney who had filed a brief supporting the school district, Gwendolyn H. Gregory of the National School Boards Assn., noted that five of the justices upheld the concept that a school system need not await a court order before turning to affirmative action as a remedy for past discrimination, even as the Jackson plan was struck down.

Exception in Contract

At issue in the case (Wygant vs. Jackson Board of Education, 84-1340) was a contract that provided an exception to the district’s “last-hired, first-fired” seniority plan: in the event of layoffs, at no time would dismissals reduce the current percentage of minority members employed. As a result, in certain school years, white teachers were laid off in favor of blacks with less seniority.

A group of white faculty members filed suit, charging that their constitutional rights were violated. Most of the teachers eventually were rehired, but they continued to seek back pay, damages and restoration of seniority.

A federal district court upheld the legality of the layoff plan, saying that its minority-preference provisions were permissible as an attempt to remedy societal discrimination by providing “role models” to minority-member students.

Powell’s opinion was joined in its entirety by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justice William H. Rehnquist. They concluded that layoffs were too burdensome on the white teachers and that a “less intrusive” remedy--the adoption of minority hiring goals--could accomplish much the same purpose without the same disruptive effects.

Justice Byron R. White, in a separate opinion, agreed that the plan was unconstitutional on the grounds that court rulings barred the layoffs of whites, who otherwise would be retained, to meet employment quotas.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the lone Reagan appointee to the court, joined in most of Powell’s opinion and agreed that the Jackson plan was impermissible. But she said that some narrowly tailored layoff plans might be acceptable.

O’Connor said she believed that the court was “in accord” that public employers could undertake affirmation action programs to further a “legitimate remedial purpose” when they do not impose disproportionate harm on innocent whites.

Voluntary Action Urged

Public employers, she said, should be encouraged to voluntarily engage in affirmative action programs if they have engaged in illegal discrimination.

In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall, joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Harry A. Blackmun, said that public employers should be permitted to institute affirmative action plans when, as in this case, there was an agreement to do so with employees. Justice John Paul Stevens also dissented.