High Court to Reconsider Key Civil Rights Precedent : 4 Justices See Harm to Minorities

A deeply split Supreme Court voted today to consider overturning a key 1976 civil rights ruling, prompting a bitter dissent from four justices who warned that victims of discrimination may fear that the court will no longer protect them.

The rare public airing of dissension within the court suggests that there may be a growing polarization between the court’s conservative and liberal wings over the direction the court should take on civil rights law.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices took the unusual step of expanding the scope of a North Carolina racial-harassment case to consider limiting the ability of minorities to sue private citizens and entities for monetary damages over alleged discrimination.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in a sharply worded dissent, said minority groups may feel betrayed by the court’s willingness to consider discarding an important civil rights precedent.

“To recognize an equality right--a right that 12 years ago we thought ‘well-established’--and then to declare unceremoniously that perhaps we were wrong and had better reconsider our prior judgment is to replace what is ideally a sense of guaranteed right with the uneasiness of unsecured privilege,” Stevens said.

He said the action is unwise activism and will “have a detrimental and enduring impact on the public’s perception of the court as an impartial adjudicator.”

Blackmun ‘at a Loss’

He was joined by Justices William J. Brennan, Harry A. Blackmun and Thurgood Marshall.

In a separate dissenting opinion, Blackmun said, “I am at a loss to understand the motivation of five members of this court to reconsider an interpretation of a civil rights statute that so clearly reflects our society’s earnest commitment to ending racial discrimination and in which Congress so evidently has acquiesced.”

The court’s majority said the dissenters were making it sound as if the court was overturning the 1976 decision.

“We have, of course, done no such thing,” the unsigned order issued by the majority said. “It is surely no affront to settled jurisprudence to request argument on whether a particular precedent should be modified or overruled.”

The North Carolina case, argued last Feb. 29, will now be held over until the court’s next term beginning in October. A ruling is likely in 1989.

Voting to rehear the case were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy.

3 Reagan Appointees

O’Connor, Scalia and Kennedy were appointed by President Reagan, a critic of some high-court rulings he considers too liberal.

Brenda Patterson, a black woman, wants to use a post-Civil War law to force her employer, McClean Credit Union, to pay actual and punitive damages for alleged racial harassment.

Lower federal courts said the law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, was designed only to ban racial discrimination in hiring, firing and promotion--not racial harassment.

The court agreed to use Patterson’s appeal to reconsider a 1976 ruling, called Runyon vs. McCrary, that held that racially segregated private schools violate the 1866 law. The 1976 decision has given civil rights groups an important legal weapon to fight racial bias by permitting them to use the law as a basis for lawsuits against private individuals.

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union here, said the court’s action will have “enormous psychological impact.”

“Basic civil rights decisions now may be considered open to attack,” he said.