Bush Rejects Civil Rights Compromise by Moderates : Legislation: President says GOP alternative plan would undercut education policy. His decision is likely to force a showdown with Congress.

President Bush has rejected a compromise plan on civil rights legislation offered by moderate Republicans, forcing a showdown between Congress and the White House over the bill, Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) said Thursday.

A disappointed Danforth, chief sponsor of the compromise proposal, made public a letter from Bush that dashed the Missourian’s months-long hopes of breaking a stalemate between the White House and Congress over the controversial bill.

“I think it’s a serious mistake for the President, his Administration and the Republican Party to try to turn the clock back on civil rights,” Danforth said at a news conference.

In his letter, the President said only that the GOP moderates’ plan would undercut his education policy by limiting employers’ discretion to require high school diplomas or similar credentials for hiring and promotion.

But Danforth, who tried for weeks to get the President to go along with the compromise, argued that his measure would prevent employers only from using employment qualifications unrelated to the job to unfairly screen out minority members and women.

“This is not a quibble,” he said. “There is a fundamental disagreement between those of us who support civil rights legislation and the President on a fundamental civil rights policy.”

Danforth said he expects the Senate to pass a civil rights bill this fall by a margin greater than the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto--despite Bush’s objections.

At issue is whether Congress should overturn a 1989 Supreme Court decision that civil rights advocates contend narrowed the scope of laws against job discrimination and gave employers greater latitude to follow employment practices, neutral on their face, that have the effect of screening out racial minorities and women.

For example, requiring a high school diploma for a menial job or requiring applicants to lift a heavy weight to qualify for a desk job that does not require heavy lifting would be barred under the Danforth bill, if the requirements tended to screen out racial minorities and women.

But the President--introducing a new argument in the long debate over the scope of a new civil rights bill--said that employers should have the right to hire on the basis of educational achievement.

“I cannot ignore the advice of the secretary of education, the attorney general and the chairman of the (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) that the . . . pending proposals will seriously, if not fatally, undermine the reform and renewal of our educational system by discouraging employers from relying on educational effort and achievement,” the President said.

Danforth met last week with Bush in an attempt to persuade him to accept the compromise plan that he and eight other moderate Republican senators had crafted.

In his letter, the President said his own proposal would bar employers from establishing unjustified educational requirements for menial jobs that are not part of an overall promotion policy.

The White House position was supported by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said that Danforth’s approach is too far-reaching and would lead employers to use racial and sexual quotas in hiring to avoid costly lawsuits.

“In the real world of work, many employers need to hire people who can adapt to a job whose duties or functions, and the skills needed to perform them, can change shortly after a person takes the job,” Hatch said in a letter to Senate colleagues.

Danforth rejected this analysis, saying: “Quotas have always been a total red herring.”