States, Cities Urged to Alter Quota Decrees

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is trying to get about 50 states and cities to modify affirmative action court decrees to limit their impact on public-service workers and job applicants, a spokesman said Friday.

The department refused to identify the localities that have been asked to change existing decrees. But a spokesman for New York Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams confirmed that that state was among the recipients of a letter from Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, seeking changes.

John Wilson, a spokesman for the department’s Civil Rights Division, which is headed by Reynolds, said letters were sent in late January urging officials to modify affirmative action orders to conform to a June, 1984, Supreme Court decision in a case involving Memphis, Tenn., firefighters.

Seniority System Upheld

In its 6-3 decision, the court ruled that Memphis could not eliminate a last-hired, first-fired seniority system when faced with the need for layoffs to protect affirmative action programs giving jobs to blacks and women.

Reynolds has interpreted that as limiting quotas and other affirmative action programs to actual victims of discrimination, rather than applying them to workers or job applicants who merely belong to the same race.

However, others maintain that the Memphis decision was narrower than Reynolds has asserted. These critics say the ruling was focused on preventing discrimination victims from being protected from layoffs at the expense of union members.

Wilson said that, in the wake of the high court’s decision in the Memphis case, Reynolds “instructed his staff to review all 75 consent decrees and court orders in employment discrimination cases” involving local and state governments.

“After that review, it was found that (in) some 50 cities and states, those orders did not conform” to the Supreme Court ruling, he said.

Barry Goldstein, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, branded the move as a poor “allocation of resources.”