Won’t Tolerate Bias Nor Accept Quotas--Bush

President Bush said Thursday that he will not tolerate bias in hiring but also will not accept a civil rights bill that imposes quotas on employers.

Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) quickly unveiled a compromise amendment intended to deal with his objections to the bill.

But the White House and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said it failed to remove their concerns.

“I want to sign a civil rights bill, but I will not sign a quota bill,” Bush said at a ceremony honoring the recently revived U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The President, who met three times this week with civil rights groups and lobbyists to search for a compromise on the legislation, said before Kennedy and Danforth announced their new proposal: “I think we can work it out.”

There is no mention of quotas--the hiring of a certain number or percentage of minority or other workers--in the bill. But Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and other critics have said the earlier version’s standard of proof for justifying exclusionary hiring practices was so tough that employers would use quotas as a way to avoid lawsuits.

The legislation would undo a series of 1989 Supreme Court decisions that make it harder for workers to prove they were victims of job discrimination.

Meanwhile, the House began action Thursday on a proposal to extend to the disabled--including people with AIDS, blindness, cerebral palsy and a number of other mental and physical impairments--the civil rights protections given racial minorities and women.

The Senate passed the bill last September by a 76-8 vote, and the White House supports it.

But the House approved an amendment Thursday that would allow food service workers with AIDS to be assigned duties to keep them from handling food. That may endanger passage since the White House had endorsed the bill’s protection for AIDS patients.