Subject: (Editorial): Grove City Revisited
Date: Published: 12/19/90 (97 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):
    Grove City Revisited

    Michael Williams, the Education Department's civil-rights
 lawyer, was right that the law plainly prohibits college
 scholarships conditioned on race.  White House Chief of Staff
 John Sununu was also right that if so, then the law is an
 ass.  This is pretty much what we've said all along in the
 dispute over the Supreme Court's Grove City case; but the
 civil-rights groups and Teddy Kennedy prevailed with the
 other side.
    Yesterday Mr. Williams and Mr. Sununu announced an
 extralegal, political compromise likely to result in further
 divisive litigation.  A roomful of White House, Justice and
 Education lawyers told Mr. Sununu that Mr. Williams was right
 that the law prohibits any university that accepts federal
 funds from then accepting race-based scholarships, even
 privately financed scholarships for minorities.  Mr. Sununu
 decided that with the political storm building, not being a
 lawyer meant he could ignore the law.  So he got Mr. Williams
 to announce that what he meant to say was that universities
 could administer scholarships for minorities so long as the
 money didn't come from federal sources.
    Remember that Mr. Williams inadvertently started the
 controversy with a letter to sponsors of the Fiesta Bowl in
 Arizona.  With the dispute there over Martin Luther King Day,
 the sponsors decided to contribute $100,000 scholarships for
 minorities.
    "I commend your efforts at advancing minority
 opportunities in education," Mr. Williams wrote.  But he
 warned that the 1964 Civil Rights Act "prohibits
 discrimination on the ground of race, color, or national
 origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial
 assistance."  He offered the Fiesta Bowl an easy way around
 the problem.  "Assuming that the Fiesta Bowl is a strictly
 private entity that receives no federal financial
 assistance," he proposed, "it can award race-exclusive
 scholarships directly to students."
    The distinction Mr. Williams drew derives from the Grove
 City case and the subsequent Grove City Bill.  In the 1984
 case, the Supreme Court said that if part of a college got
 federal aid, then that part would be subject to federal
 civil-rights laws.  This expanded the coverage of the
 civil-rights laws, but the civil-rights lobby was not
 satisfied.  Senator Kennedy pushed the so-called Grove City
 Bill, passed over President Reagan's veto in 1988, to make
 all parts of any school (or business) subject to the
 civil-rights laws if any part involved federal funding or
 contracts.
    In other words, Mr. Williams, a black conservative, was
 simply enforcing the civil-rights law written by Teddy
 Kennedy.  To compound the irony, we note that the civil-rights
 groups now blame Mr. Williams for failing to consult with the
 White House before issuing his legal opinion.  Imagine how
 quickly William Bradford Reynolds would have been driven out
 of town on a rail if he had politicized the law by consulting
 first with President Reagan.
    We are also troubled by the spectacle of the White House
 ignoring clear legal rules for political reasons.  The only
 justification for this will be if the White House now calls
 for full repudiation of the Grove City rules on private
 funds.  Otherwise, we are left with the Sununu Doctrine, that
 different laws apply to different races.
    The White j+@>YPwould need some fancy legal work to
 persuade the Supreme Court to accept any such doctrine.  Even
 if the 1964 Civil Rights Act can be turned on its head to
 allow preferential treatment, the Justices are unlikely to
 read the Constitution that way.  Aside from Grove City, the
 Bakke quota case and the Croson minority set-aside case make
 it clear that it is unconstitutional to allow discrimination
 even to favor minorities.
    The debate about the number of race-based college
 scholarships that can dance on the head of a pin is a perfect
 illustration of how Washington now works.  The serious
 civil-rights problems of crime, public schools, drugs and
 AIDS get ignored in a highly legalistic sideshow.  The country
 would make more progress if the courts and the federal
 government stopped trying to dictate every aspect of race
 relations and left some discretion with private institutions.
    We say this because we disagree with the civil-rights
 establishment, which still believes that the United States is
 somehow a fundamentally racist society.  We hope and trust
 private Americans would be wise enough to avoid rigid and
 divisive quotas.  But left to their own devices, the great
 bulk of employers and practically all universities would do
 what they can to seek out minorities.  At the very least,
 that's one clear lesson to draw from the minority-scholarship
 hassle.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]