Expanded Civil Rights Coverage Urged : Bias: Reversing a Bush Administration position, the Justice Department asks the Supreme Court to apply a 1991 law to cases pending before passage.

The Justice Department, reversing a position adopted by the George Bush Administration, urged the Supreme Court on Friday to apply the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to the thousands of job discrimination cases that were pending when the measure became law.

That issue will be resolved by the justices in two cases to be heard in October.

If the high court were to adopt the Clinton Administration’s view, employers could have to pay costly damage claims for discrimination that occurred years ago. Job discrimination suits often take five years or more to come to trial, which means cases that began in the early 1980s could still be pending on appeal.

The 1991 law reversed a series of Supreme Court rulings that had made it harder for employees to prove they had suffered discrimination. It also, for the first time, permitted victims of sex discrimination to win damages from employers.

The measure became law on Nov. 21, 1991, after a prolonged and bitter fight between congressional Democrats and the Bush White House. Bush vetoed two versions of the bill, contending that they would force employers to hire by quotas to avoid lawsuits.

A few days after the Senate narrowly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Bush announced that he would sign the pending civil rights bill that became law.

The legislation did not spell out whether the law should apply retroactively, but then-White House counsel C. Boyden Gray drafted a statement for Bush insisting that its provisions--such as the damage remedies for women--would apply only to cases that arose after that date.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had adhered to that position until it was reversed last week by the Clinton White House.

“We have reexamined our position and have concluded that it is incorrect,” the Justice Department said in its brief to the high court.

The Supreme Court itself has been confused over the years on whether new laws apply retroactively to pending cases. In a 1964 school case, the court said that judges should apply the law as it exists when a case reaches them, even if it was different when the case first arose.

But in a 1988 case involving reimbursements for hospitals, the court said retroactivity is not favored in the law unless Congress clearly says that new provisions should apply to old cases still pending.

Not surprisingly, lower courts have been divided recently on whether the 1991 law should apply retroactively. Most have taken the view that the new law does not cover cases that arose before 1991, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California has taken the opposite view and applied the law retroactively.

That split finally forced the high court to announce that it would resolve the issue.