Court Rejects Bid to Reinstate Capital Job Plan

A federal appeals panel rejected a claim Friday that a landmark Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action should apply to the District of Columbia’s attempts to hire more black firefighters.

The panel, on a 2-1 vote, said it would not reinstate a hiring plan the court had struck down in February as a form of racial discrimination against whites, this time calling it “a rigid quota based strictly on race.”

The ruling was a victory for the Reagan Administration, which argued against the city’s attempt to comply with a 1984 consent decree to come up with an affirmative action plan for firefighters.

Broadened Endorsement

The city wanted the plan reinstated in light of a March decision by the Supreme Court which, ruling in a California case involving the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency, broadened its endorsement of affirmative action.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said, however, that the guidelines in the so-called Johnson case and the 1978 case of Allan Bakke, the white medical student who sued the University of California, were narrowly fitted to a particular situation.

“We do not . . . condemn the district’s overall aim of avoiding discrimination against minorities. To the contrary, we only find impermissible the means--a rigid quota based strictly on race--that the district has chosen to achieve that aim,” it said.