Administration Opposes Revamped Rights Bill : Congress: Thornburgh warns President would veto measure in its current form. White House says compromise legislation still includes quotas.

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said Friday that changes in civil rights legislation forged by congressional negotiators have failed to improve the bill, and he warned that President Bush still plans to veto the measure if it reaches his desk in its current form.

In a three-page letter to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Thornburgh outlined the Bush Administration’s opposition to the compromise measure approved by a House-Senate conference Thursday.

“In our view, the new amendments adopted in conference do not offer substantial improvement,” Thornburgh’s letter stated. “Indeed, in some respects they make the bill worse.”

The seven-point compromise was designed to persuade the White House to support the legislation, which would reverse recent Supreme Court decisions that make it more difficult for workers to prove employment discrimination.

A key provision of the compromise was intended to make clear that the burden of proof in discrimination complaints would remain with workers alleging job bias. The accord also spelled out “with greater precision” objections to the use of quotas in employment decisions.

Among the backers of the compromise was Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a conservative who had opposed the civil rights legislation in its original form. Hatch lobbied the White House to sign the compromise legislation.

But Administration officials remained unconvinced that the compromise made fundamental changes in the bill. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told reporters that the new legislation was “still a quota bill.”

Civil rights activists were outraged by the Administration’s rejection of the latest measure and accused senior White House officials for the first time of failing to negotiate “in good faith” on behalf of the President.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a key backer of the legislation, denounced the Thornburgh letter on the Senate floor, saying the attorney general “has two words in his civil rights vocabulary--quotas and veto.”

Kennedy urged Bush not to veto the bill. “I believe we have a good chance in Congress to override the veto,” Kennedy said. “But I urge President Bush to take an independent look at this legislation and the many good faith efforts we have made to go the extra mile and to meet every reasonable objection of the White House.”

Backers of the bill were particularly incensed by a proposal by White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu to revise sections of the legislation allowing employers to give weight to “legitimate community or customer relationship efforts” in hiring decisions. The proposal, offered in a Sept. 21 letter to Kennedy, was rejected earlier by the civil rights groups.

In releasing the contents of the proposal, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights complained that such language indicated presidential advisers’ contempt for civil rights. The conference noted that the provision was similar to “code words” used by businesses to avoid hiring blacks and Jews long before civil rights laws were passed.

If the provision were enacted, a business could justify a decision to not hire qualified black applicants by stating that customers would not want to do business with them, the conference said in a statement. “This new demand, never before raised during months of discussions on the bill, would set back the civil rights clock more than 25 years,” the statement said.

Since May, the Administration has been negotiating with congressional leaders and civil rights advocates in an effort to draft a bill that would remove the President’s veto threat.

“Democratic and Republican supporters of the bill have already agreed to numerous changes to accommodate Administration concerns and have continued to seek compromises,” the conference said. “White House staff, however, have not.”

Throughout the often intense negotiations, civil rights activists have been careful to use conciliatory language to describe their dealings with the White House, apparently to avoid antagonizing the Administration or conservative lawmakers.

But after witnessing the rejection of their latest compromise, civil rights leaders raised the tone and volume of their rhetoric. In addition to disclosing contents of their private talks, they sharply criticized Thornburgh, Sununu and White House counsel C. Boyden Gray. They avoided criticizing Bush, who has said he wants to sign a civil rights bill.

Some of the bill’s supporters said privately they doubted that Bush would actually veto the bill. Rather, they speculated that the President had instructed his advisers to bargain away as much of the legislation’s proposals as possible.

Even so, the supporters said they felt they had to appear willing to negotiate or risk alienating conservative Republicans whose votes might be needed to override a veto.

But one outspoken supporter said civil rights activists went too far to appease the White House, forcing him to re-evaluate his position on the bill.

“You don’t compromise when you’re winning,” Rep. Craig Washington (D-Tex.) said. “You compromise when you’re losing. We were winning up until some of the people in the civil rights community intellectualized (the bill) too much.”

Washington said he now intends to vote against the bill in the House because it has been watered down so much that it is a “hollow shell of a civil rights bill.”

But Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference, said negotiators made concessions “to bring the President on board with us” in supporting the bill.

“It’s obvious that his staff agrees with those Supreme Court decisions,” Neas said. “But there’s an enormous gap between the President’s statements and what has happened in these negotiations.”