RULING ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION : Businessman Who Brought Lawsuit Praises Ruling by Justices : Courts: He says his gripe focused on government bias against whites, not his rival firms. Dissenting voices, however, see a setback for minorities, women.

Randy Pech says he had nothing against his minority-owned competitors. His gripe was with what he views as government-backed discrimination against whites. “It’s not like it’s a them-against-me situation,” he said Monday of his business rivals. “I’m not attacking them--just the program.”

Pech, who described his major competitors as well-established companies who don’t need the edge provided by the government’s affirmative action program, took his gripe to the Supreme Court--and won.

The Colorado man, the white owner of Adarand Constructors Inc., objected when a coveted job went to a minority-owned company because of a government affirmative action program--despite the fact that his was the lowest bid.

Through the Small Business Act, government agencies are required to use their purchasing power to help small businesses, with historically disadvantaged owners, i.e., minorities and women, receiving special breaks. This case centered on a program for awarding federal highway contracts.

“It was very discouraging to run a legitimate, honest business, to go to a lot of trouble of bidding on a project--to know you did a great job and came in the low bid--and then find out they can’t use you because they have to meet their ‘goals,’ ” Pech said, after learning that the Supreme Court had agreed with him.

“We get along fine with these other companies,” he said. “We help each other out. This wasn’t about them. It was about the program, a program that says it’s OK for the government to discriminate. It shouldn’t be OK for the government to discriminate. That’s what we were trying to accomplish.”

But others decried the high court’s decision as a major setback to gains made in recent years by women and minorities, and urged the Clinton Administration to aggressively defend the affirmative action concept.

“Affirmative action isn’t magic,” said Laura Oren, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center. “But it has made a difference. This decision gives political ammunition to those who would dismantle affirmative action.

“In recent years, a growing number on the court have felt that it’s all over with, that we fixed it all and therefore it is unjust to use these programs because they impose an injustice the other way,” she continued. “Whatever good has been achieved has not been so enormous; it’s not as if we’ve arrived and can heave a big sigh of relief and say we can ignore this problem. We still have a long way to go.”

Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, urged President Clinton and the Congress: “Don’t lead the retreat, don’t take the bait this decision offers and back down. Affirmative action is a defining issue in our country right now, and it will be a defining issue in next year’s campaigns.

“Today’s decision shows what a difference five years and four justices can make in the treatment of women and people of color under the U.S. Constitution,” she added.

But Republican California Gov. Pete Wilson called the court’s ruling “another important step in our journey toward equal opportunity and a colorblind society, where individual merit is the new standard, as opposed to group entitlements based on race or gender.”

Wilson, who last week issued an executive order abolishing affirmative action preferences in state government, said: “The country is moving into a new era of equal opportunity, where everyone is given an equal opportunity regardless of characteristics that were bestowed on them at birth.”

Wilson said he hoped that “defenders of the status quo will move beyond the racial rhetoric” and recognize that the nation was ready for a system “that guarantees equal opportunity for all, and special, race-based preferences for none.”

Organizers seeking to place a state constitutional amendment outlawing racial preferences on California’s November, 1996, ballot said the court’s decision served to strengthen their resolve.

While the decision was in keeping with the intent of the California Civil Rights Initiative, “it is not the same thing as a constitutional amendment,” said Joe Gelman, campaign manager for the initiative.

“Supreme Court decisions come and go, governors come and go, policies change,” he said. “We need a constitutional amendment, the principle of a colorblind system enshrined in the Constitution.”

In a written statement, the initiative’s co-author Tom Wood praised the court decision.

“The government should never have an interest in discriminating on the basis of race or gender and this Supreme Court decision moves us in the right direction,” Wood said.

The CCRI essentially restates the original language of the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, saying that neither the state nor any of its subdivisions “shall use race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group in the operation of the state’s system of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

Gelman said that organizers plan to begin collecting signatures in the fall. Nearly 700,000 valid signatures must be collected to place the initiative on the ballot.

Times staff writer Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles and researcher Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this story.