Thomas Fought Workplace Harassment : Judiciary: Nominee urged a strong stand when the issue was before the high court. Co-workers are struck by the irony of the charges against him.

In 1985, Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, played a key role in urging the Ronald Reagan Administration to take a strong stand against sexual harassment in the workplace when the issue came before the Supreme Court.

Although federal law made it clear that sexist behavior was illegal if it caused a woman to lose her job or a promotion, the high court had not ruled on whether sexual harassment alone violated anti-discrimination laws.

The issue stood in doubt because conservative Judges Robert H. Bork, Antonin Scalia and Kenneth Starr, all on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia at the time, had contended in a May, 1985, dissenting opinion that on-the-job harassment did not violate the laws against sex discrimination. Bork had denounced as “a bizarre result” other rulings “classifying sexual advances as ‘discrimination,’ ” and said he foresaw employers being held liable for “sexual dalliances” among co-workers.

Fearing that the Reagan Administration would adopt Bork’s position, Thomas set up a meeting with Solicitor General Charles Fried.

“He came to my office and made a very strong, very reasoned and powerful pitch,” Fried recalled Wednesday. “He was concerned about the kind of academic arguments that were being made. In the real world, he said, this is a very serious problem for women,” said Fried, now a Harvard law professor.

Fried, who as a child escaped Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia, was responsible for formulating the Reagan Administration position before the high court. In their meeting, Thomas compared forcing a woman to work in an atmosphere of sexual harassment to forcing a Jewish employee to work in an office filled with Nazi memorabilia.

After their meeting, Fried filed a government brief with the high court contending that “unwelcome sexual advances” by a male co-worker create a “hostile working environment” for women. This form of sexual harassment violates federal anti-discrimination laws, the brief said, whether or not the victims suffer a loss of a job or other economic benefits.

On June 19, 1986, the Supreme Court accepted this argument in a unanimous ruling in the case of Meritor Savings Bank vs. Vinson, still the most important legal pronouncement on the issue of sexual harassment.

Thomas’ public stand against sexual harassment in the workplace certainly does not resolve accusations that he privately harassed a former aide, Anita Faye Hill. But co-workers and former government lawyers--some of whom clashed with Thomas over other issues--said Wednesday that they were struck by the irony of the charges against him.

They noted that the sexual harassment issue marked the one time Thomas insisted on going to the Justice Department to argue personally that the Reagan Administration take a particular position before the Supreme Court.

“He took any sort of workplace harassment--racial, sexual or national origin--very seriously,” said Susan Murphy, an EEOC lawyer who worked on the Meritor Savings case. “He was appalled by it and thought the EEOC needed to be aggressive in these kinds of cases. I think he was sensitive about (sexual harassment) because he saw the parallel to racial harassment.”

Throughout the Reagan years, the EEOC and women’s rights advocates differed on whether employers should be automatically liable if one of their employees or supervisors harasses another employee. Thomas and the Reagan Administration argued that a company or agency that took a stand against sexual harassment should not be held legally responsible if an employee, unknown to top officials, harassed another employee.

“In that instance, he argued for narrowing the employer’s liability,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center.

But women’s rights lawyers agree that Thomas took a strong stand against sexual harassment in the workplace when the issue was in doubt.

“Today, we can say that (stand against sexual harassment) was a no-brainer. But it wasn’t a no-brainer then,” said former EEOC Commissioner Fred Alvarez, now a San Francisco lawyer.

During his 1984-87 term, Alvarez said, he “disagreed more often than not” with Thomas on controversial issues, such as affirmative action. But the two agreed entirely on the seriousness of sexual harassment.

“He was absolutely intolerant of sexual harassment,” Alvarez said. “It’s sadly ironic that this is the issue that has come up.”

Former co-workers at the EEOC portrayed Thomas as someone whose behavior reflected his expressed support for tough sexual harassment laws.

“I’m a fairly attractive black woman, and Judge Thomas has never said or done or looked in any manner that was inappropriate,” said Patricia Cornwell Johnson, who was hired by Thomas as director of labor relations at the EEOC in 1987 and worked with him for nearly three years.

Cynthia Matthews, who was on Thomas’ personal staff when he was chairman and still works at the EEOC, said: “The current charges are simply shocking because there was never anything that would have suggested a basis for such a charge.”

Sixty women at the EEOC signed a statement released by the White House in which they praised Thomas for his support of women while at the commission. The women said that they were hired or promoted by Thomas while he was EEOC chairman.

Matthews, who was contacted independently and was not a signer of the statement, worked as a secretary to Thomas and then as head of the executive secretary pool while he was chairman. She said she was in a position to hear any rumors about sexual misconduct and heard nothing about Thomas.

“I have never seen anything that would make them (the charges) plausible,” she said.

Johnson, who is on maternity leave from her EEOC job, said she was a victim of sexual harassment in an earlier position and remains extremely sensitive to the issue.