Danforth Says It’s Bush’s Move on Civil Rights Bill : Legislation: Measure can be passed quickly if President compromises on safeguards against job bias, GOP senator states. Issue is politically explosive.

Moderate Republican Sen. John C. Danforth, seeking to salvage a congressional civil rights bill, said Wednesday that it is now up to President Bush to decide whether he wants the legislation and is willing to make a compromise to get it.

If Bush will agree to adopt his plan for resolving a key dispute over job discrimination safeguards, a compromise measure can be adopted swiftly, Danforth told reporters at a breakfast session.

“This policy issue is ripe for decision . . . “ the Missouri senator said. “If the President is being advised to keep this issue alive for political purposes, I don’t think that is good advice.”

The civil rights impasse has become an explosive political issue.

The House has passed a bill designed to reverse the effect of several Supreme Court rulings that made it more difficult for minority members and women to pursue employment discrimination cases.

Bush has threatened to veto the measure, contending that it will force employers to adopt hiring quotas to protect themselves against costly lawsuits. Democratic sponsors of the measure have accused the President of exploiting the politics of race.

Danforth said he is trying to meet with the President to argue his case for the civil rights compromise, but he noted that Bush is so busy preparing for next week’s Moscow summit meeting that he may not be able to consider the Danforth proposal until after his return.

A key dispute involves employment policies that appear on their face to be neutral but have the effect of excluding certain groups from the work force. Under Danforth’s proposal, companies could not adopt such policies if they are not clearly related to an employee’s ability to perform a job.

For example, he said, an employer would not be allowed to require a high school diploma for a janitor’s job if it had the effect of excluding minority members. Similarly, Danforth said, employers would not be able to require that job applicants be able to lift heavy weights, a policy likely to exclude women, unless the job involved actual lifting.

In the past, White House officials have rejected the approach advocated by Danforth and argued that employers should be able to require tests and other job qualifications as long as they appear to meet a legitimate business objective.

Danforth said that a favorable presidential decision would clear the way for rapid approval of his plan in the Senate, where civil rights legislation has been languishing since the House adopted its own bill by a vote of 273 to 158, 17 votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a presidential veto.

But Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and a chief lobbyist for the House measure, said that he is not optimistic that the President will accept Danforth’s proposal.

“I don’t think the White House wants a strong civil rights bill enacted into law,” Neas said, adding that he believes such a bill eventually will be enacted.

Danforth said that some members of his own party, particularly in the South, believe that Republicans should identify with whites and not attempt to win blacks away from the Democratic Party.

He said that one GOP colleague in the Senate tried to discourage him from working on a civil rights compromise, telling him: “Don’t muddy the water while we’re trying to shoot fish in it.”

Danforth, who is also the chief Senate advocate of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, served notice that the President is not going to name another black if Thomas, a conservative appeals court judge, is rejected by the Senate.

“George Bush is going to nominate somebody of the same persuasion as he is,” Danforth said. “He’s not going to nominate a liberal activist . . . . You’re not going to get a card-carrying member of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).”