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Norton Calls for Civil Rights Coalition

By Loretta Feller

An audience packed with students, activists, professors and attorneys heard Eleanor Holmes Norton warn that civil rights groups have more to fear from their own disarray than from the Reagan administration. The articulate former Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity. Commission (EEOC) presented her pithy analysis of the current state of civil rights legislation and affirmative action on October 21 at Cleveland State University. Ms. Norton, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., is now writing a book on affirmative action with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

While praising the efforts of Working Women and its local affiliate, Cleveland Women Working, on behalf of affirmative action, Ms. Norton admonished the larger civil rights groups to present a more organized opposition to the numerous proposals coming from Congress and the administration.

"There have been so many attacks on social programs in the last ten years and people are pulled in so many different directions that, frankly, the great coalitions of social action in this country have had a hard time keeping their hands on the many issues that have been 'upset since this administration came into

power," she said. She mentioned that Rep. Augustus Hawkins (D-Calif.), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Employment Opportunity (part of the Education and Labor Committee), recently stated his willingness to coordinate a national conference to inform people of what is happening and to strategize. A subcommittee aide confirmed that a format for such a conference is now being prepared.

Ms. Norton described the administration's anticivil rights moves as "more inept than diabolical,” but acknowledged that Congress, which is more able to make changes that stick, is proposing a virtual "**rainfall" of actions. These "extreme and irreponsible" measures, she observed, do not have popular support or the approval of the mainstream House or Senate.

In rapid succession, Ms. Norton outlined a plethora of ominous-sounding yet disjointed ideas currently circulating on Capitol Hill. She pointed to a particularly unworthy set of proposals by the House Wednesday Group, a caucus of 31 Republican Congressmen who, oddly, have been described as moderates and liberals. They have suggested abolishing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP) and eviscerating the EEOC. Under their plan, charges of discrimination would be sent back to the state and local fair employment practice

agencies, and EEOC field offices, would be consolidated with the Department of Justice, possibly under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

Ms. Norton also decried, Sen. Orrin Hatch's (R-Utah) "Equal Protection Amendment" which would bar civil rights agencies and the courts from establishing affirmative action goals and timetables as a remedy for discrimination. She labelled a proposal by Rep. Paul McCloskey (R-Calif.), previously a supporter of civil rights legislation, an "atom. bomb" approach to ending discrimination. McCloskey's suggestion would ignore corrective measures such as affirmative action or back pay, and make debarment (precluding employers from receiving federal contracts) the only remedy to a finding of discrimination.

Congress and the President are not listening to the workaday world, Ms. Norton asserted, as much as they are listening to "ideological voices in their own heads". Although voters were expressing concern about inflation in the last election, she contended, Reagan and Congress did not have an anti-minority or anti-feminist mandate. Neither, she said, did they have a mandate to deal with "the favorite issues of the moral majority".

"I do not believe that Americans are, by any means, willing to turn around and march backward

House Wed. Group: Gypsy Moths or Boll Weevils?

By Loretta Feller

Three Congressmen from Ohio are among 15 Republican representatives in Washington, D.C. who intend to introduce legislation which would virtually abolish EEOC enforcement functions and totally eliminate the OFCCP. Reps. Willis Gradison from Cincinnati (1st District), J. William Stanton from Painesville (11th District), and Ralph Regula from Canton (16th District) have signed a cover letter on a proposal drafted by the House Wednesday Group, a caucus of 31 Republican Congressional Representatives. The proposal, which is some hundred pages long, is currently being studied in the nation's capital.

The Bureau of National Affiars summarizes the proposal as follows:

The bill would place all civil rights enforcement-including that applying to employment opportunity-in the Department of Justice. EEOC would be reduced to a shell of its current existence, with its sole responsibility being to administer fair employment in the federal workplace. Complaints against private employers, although ultimately administered by the Justice Department, initially would be referred to state and local fair employment agencies....

In addition, the proposal calls for elimination of goals and timetables, currently mandated under the affirmative action requirements of Executive Order 11246. It would totally abolish OFCCP, as well as a series of other civil rights enforcement agencies throughout the Federal Government. Affirmative action would become a voluntary "selfpolicing" system by private employers....

[T]he GOP proposal also would eliminate filing of nearly all federal report forms, including EEO-1, and the elimination of much EEO recordkeeping. (Reprinted by special permission from Daily Labor Report, 1981, Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington, D.C.) Contacted.at his office in the House Annex, Steven Hoffman, executive director of the House Wednesday Group, explained that the legislative proposal

Page 4/What She Wants/November, 1981

would consolidate federal civil rights and investigatory activities of some 40 agencies under the Department of Justice (DOJ). People would file their complaints with DOJ regional offices. The Attorney General would then refer the complaints to approved state agencies, he said. He denied that the proposal was an attempt to change the law.

Mr. Hoffman's denial raises the suspicion that he is unfamiliar either with the proposal or with the laws in question, or both. In fact, as concerns Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 alone, the proposal would repeal twelve of the eighteen sections of that law. Among other things, these sections establish the 5-member bipartisan Commission which oversees the workings of the EEOC, and establish EEOC authority and powers to prevent or remedy unlawful employment practices. Additionally, these sections establish the EEOC's legal division and the jurisdiction of the courts over actions brought under the Title.

Christine Owens, who is analyzing the proposal for the Women's Legal Defense Fund, told WSW that enactment of the plan would politicize civil rights enforcement by removing authority from the bipartisan Commission and putting it in the hands of the Attorney General, a cabinet level appointee. In fact, Attorney General William French Smith recently stated that he feels federal courts have overstepped their powers and that the Justice Department will seek to rein them in, citing particularly the areas of affirmative action, school busing, and abortion.

Ms. Owens also noted that the provision prohibiting the federal agency from touching an investigation until the state or local agency finished with it could conceivably allow the state or local agency to sit on an investigation, raising the question of the balance of interest between the federal and state governments.

When asked which Congressmen were members of the House Wednesday Group, Mr. Hoffman insisted that the membership list was not public information (in fact, caucuses are not required to publish the names of their members). He added that membership in the Group did not necessarily signal support of this proposal.

Consistent with other special interest caucuses and

legislative service organizations, the House Wednesday Group occupies space in a House office building and has a House telephone. These groups are also eligible to receive donations from members' official allowances to help pay for dues, staff salaries, and subscriptions to publications. Lee Norrgard, an investigator at the Better Government Association, indicated that in 1980, the Group received over $11,000 in dues from members' official allowances, and nearly $69,000 in clerk time (money from House members' staff allotments pledged to people who do not work directly in their offices). Although caucuses are eligible to receive outside donations (at least until 1983 when they will have to choose between receiving outside funds or severing their ties with Congress), Mr. Norrgard noted that the Group's policy for the last two years has been not to accept outside donations.

The House Wednesday Group does appear to be undergoing a transition in perspective which could conceivably contribute to the reluctance to divulge members' names. Mr. Norrgard pointed out that the Group used to be considered moderate to liberal. At this point, however, it would be misleading to call it a moderate Republican group, since its Chair, Rep. M. Caldwell Butler (R-Va.), is better known as a conservative. Although he did not have a membership list, Mr. Norrgard said he understood the Group's members still included a large number of "gypsy moths" (moderate to liberal Republicans from the northeast and midwest), as contrasted with "boll weevils" (conservative southerners).

One woman's name appears on the proposal's cover letter as one of the 15 Representatives intending eventually to introduce it in the House. Described by Mr. Norrgard as a "gypsy moth," Rep. Margaret Heckler (R-Mass.) is Co-Chair of the Congresswomen's Caucus. Rep. Heckler was unavailable for comment. Her legislative director, Mike Viilo, while acknowledging Rep. Heckler's membership in the House Wednesday Group, denied having any knowledge of the proposal. He said he had not seen the proposal and was unaware that Rep. Heckler had signed anything related to it.