corruption of 'civil rights', The

Federal Government Now Promotes Discrimination

Once upon a time, the civil rights laws were aimed at stopping irrational and immoral discrimination. Now, unfortunately, they are used to challenge practices that are neither, or to defend practices that are both.

Consider this grab-bag of recent news items involving the civil rights policies of the federal government.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continues to thumb its nose at the courts, issuing new rules that are aimed at pressuring broadcasters into using racial, ethnic and gender preferences in their recruiting policies. In 1998, a federal court of appeals struck down the FCC's regulations as illegally discriminatory. The new rules supposedly fix this problem while still promoting "diversity."

But the latest regulations, released February 2, are in fact still discriminatory. As a dissenting commissioner, Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth, wrote: "The revised regulations bear some of the same characterstics that led the Court of Appeals to find the original rules unconstitutional."

Janice R. Lachance, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, wrote a letter on January 12 to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno asking her to ignore a recommendation that same day by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) that the federal government end two preferential hiring methods. MSPB Chairman Ben L. Erdreich said that "it is now time to return to merit-based hiring." But, according to the Washington Post, Lachance's letter "mak[es] it unlikely that the Clinton Administration will move to dismantle the special hiring programs."

When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOES--belatedly-fired Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born engineer, for security violations, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fell all over himself in reassuring AsianAmericans that his department isn't prejudiced. On January 19 he hired Jeremy S. Wu to be an ombudsman ("I wanted an Asian-American," explained Richardson. "We have problems with our AsianAmerican employees"), and has promised that DOE will be more aggressive in recruiting Asian-American scientists.

But, since Lee is in jail and awaiting trial on charges of mishandling U.S. weapons secrets-he was indicted last month for transferring highly classified nuclear weapons data to unsecure computer tapes, seven of which are missing-isn't any perception of national origin discrimination at least a bit, shall we say, premature?

The Washington Times last month obtained a copy of CIA Director George J. Tenet's affirmative action plan for his agency. The seven-page document never mentions the word-"merit" as a goal or condition of promotion, but does demand that managers "Improve the representation of women and minorities" and "Promote and advance women and minorities at a rate at least consistent with their representation in the relevant labor force."

Quotas, anyone? Indeed, goal 4.1 of the plan makes explicit that it will "Hold managers accountable" who fail in "executing [the plan's] goals and objectives" but will be "Recognize and reward" those who succeed.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December forced the Ford Motor Credit Co. to pay $650,000 and stop its practice of aggregating the income of married couples, but not unmarried couples, who apply for credit. But aren't couples who are legally married more likely to stay and not divide their incomes and assets? It doesn't matter to the FTC. The decision the same month by the state summe court to require Vermont to recognize same-sex unions for "the benefits and protections that its laws provide" was rightly decried as anti-marriage. But the FTC's position, based on a dubious reading of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, is at least as extreme in promoting "significant others" to spouses.

On January 24 and then, three days later, in his State of the Union address, President Clinton announced a renewed push for the Paycheck Fairness Act. It has been the law since 1963 that men and women doing the same job must be paid the same, but this new bill is an attempt to smuggle the concept of "comparable worth" into the law.

Under this theory, men and women doing different jobs must be paid the same if, in some bureaucrat's or judge's opinion, the two jobs have the same worth. Bye-bye free market, hello commissars.

The AFL-CIO supports even more radical legislation at the state level, and its director of the "working women's department," Karen Nussbaum, complained, "Child care workers earn less than gas station attendants. We still undervalue women's work."

She would have wages and salaries set by the government instead of the marketplace, to be enforced by civil rights bureaucrats and plaintiffs' lawyers.

There aren't many disputes in life these days that can't be made into a civil rights case. It should come as no surprise, then, that a report issued on January 16 by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, between 1990 and 1998, the number of civil rights lawsuits filed doubled, from 18,793 to 42,354. If we focus just on employment discrimination claims, the number tripled, from 8,413 to 23,735.