House OKs Civil Rights Bill Despite Veto Threat : Legislation: The measure seeks to restore workplace protections against discrimination that were undercut by recent Supreme Court decisions.

House Democrats set the stage for a civil rights showdown with the White House Friday by passing a broad anti-discrimination bill for the workplace that President Bush has promised to veto.

On a 272-154 vote, the House approved the measure, which reverses five recent Supreme Court rulings and, for the first time, gives women who are victims of workplace sexual harassment the right to sue their employers for damages in federal court.

The 10-hour debate in the House was a rhetorical replay of the Senate consideration two weeks ago. Democrats said the measure would “restore civil rights” protections that were undercut by a conservative Supreme Court. Republicans said the bill would force employers to use racial quotas in hiring.

On July 19, the Senate approved the bill on a 65-34 vote, just short of the two-thirds margin needed to overcome a presidential veto. The House vote also was short of the two-thirds margin.

Before approving the bill, House Democrats passed two amendments in an attempt to head off Republican complaints about quotas and the cost to small businesses.

The first said that the bill shall not be “construed to require an employer to adopt hiring or promotion quotas on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” Moreover, a “mere statistical imbalance in an employer’s work force” is not enough to drag a company into federal court to justify its hiring or promotion policies.

The second amendment sought to counter Republican complaints that small businesses could be bankrupted by huge damage awards. The bill put a $150,000 limit on the amount of punitive damages that may be assessed against a company with fewer than 100 employees that is found guilty of discrimination.

Republicans, who labeled the two amendments as “fig leaves,” voted against them because they didn’t believe they addressed their objections.

After House and Senate members work out minor differences between the bills in a conference, the legislation will be sent to Bush, who has said repeatedly that he would veto the bill. In a letter to House Republicans Thursday, he said the legislation is “neither sound nor practical. I am convinced it will have the effect of forcing businesses to adopt quotas in hiring and promotion.” After the House bill was passed, the White House reiterated its veto threat.

“This is the first major litmus test for the President on civil rights,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “This is a critical piece of legislation which will define the climate for the nation in civil rights in years to come.”

Key provisions of the legislation include:

--Blacks who are the victims of racial harassment on the job may sue their employers for actual and punitive damages. Last year, the court ruled that, although blacks who lose a job because of racial bias may sue, those who experience workplace harassment may not.

--All victims of “intentional” job discrimination based on race, sex, religion or national origin may sue their employers in federal court for damages. This is an expansion of 1964 Civil Rights Act, which gave bias victims the right to get their jobs back but not to win damages. This is not entirely new for Californians because bias victims have had a right to sue for damages in state courts.

--White employees who say they are victims of reverse discrimination because of a court-imposed “consent decree” requiring minority hiring may not sue the employers if they had a “reasonable opportunity” to challenge the decree earlier and did not do so.

--The time period for filing job discrimination suits was extended from 180 days to two years.

These provisions were largely ignored in the debate. Instead, the bitter squabbling focused on a relatively rare type of lawsuit, one in which a group of job candidates contends that an employer’s hiring or promotion standards are biased against them.

In these class-action lawsuits, the plaintiffs do not argue that they were treated differently because of their race, sex or ethnic background but rather that job criteria resulted in a discriminatory impact on them.

For example, women have contended that physical tests used to hire firefighters result in excluding them from the jobs. Similarly, black bank examiners in Chicago contended recently that a written test used by federal officials had the effect of blocking their promotions.

Lawyers for the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission said that fewer than 50 of these suits are filed annually nationwide.

The dispute over this provision of the civil rights legislation centered on who bore the burden of proof--the employer or the employee or applicant.

This type of lawsuit originated in a 1971 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Griggs vs. Duke Power. Blacks who were denied janitorial jobs at a North Carolina power plant because they did not have a high school diploma contended that this hiring standard was a guise for discrimination. The high court agreed and ruled that employers must prove that their job standards are a “business necessity” if they have a discriminatory impact.

Last year, in the case of Wards Cove Packing Co. vs. Atonio, the court largely overruled the 1971 decision. Any hiring standard that met a “legitimate employment goal” was legal, the court said, and the disgruntled job candidates had the burden of proving otherwise.

Now, both the House and Senate have voted to reverse that decision and go back to the Griggs rule. A public or private employer accused of discriminatory hiring standards must show that its requirements have a “significant relationship to successful performance of the job.”

House Democrats said this is a fair rule for employers and employees. “This is not a quota measure. That argument is a total red herring,” said Rep. Jim Slattery (D-Kan.).

Republicans disagreed and said businesses would feel obliged to use hiring quotas to head off such a lawsuit.

The House bill was sponsored by Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles), who is retiring this year after 28 years in Congress.

In the California delegation, all 27 Democrats voted for the bill. All but one of the 18 Republicans voted against it. The exception was Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Palo Alto), who voted for the bill.