Word: courtly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...workers, as well as for U.S. society at large: Is it fair to discriminate against whites in order to help the longtime victims of discrimination, notably blacks and other disadvantaged minorities? Last week, ruling in the crucial case of United Steelworkers of America vs. Weber, the U.S. Supreme Court gave an answer. Employers can indeed choose to give special job preference to blacks without fear of being harassed by reverse-discrimination suits brought by other employees. The ruling was a strong endorsement of affirmative-action programs, one that will both protect them from legal assault and spur their expansion...
...Weber decision contrasted sharply with the Supreme Court's ruling last year in the case of Allan Bakke, the white who was denied admission to the medical school of the University of California at Davis because of a minority quota. In Bakke, the court took a muddled position on the reverse-discrimination issue: it said no to explicit quotas for minorities, at least in admissions to publicly supported universities, but it also declared that, yes, race could be a factor in choosing applicants. It did not speak at all to the issue of the fairness of affirmative action...
...employer, the Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp., and the Steelworkers Union in 1974, charging that he had been illegally excluded from a training program for higher paying skilled jobs, such as electrician and repairman, in which half the places were reserved for minorities. Though Weber won in two lower courts, he lost in the high court. By a 5-to-2 vote, the justices ruled that employers can indeed give blacks special preference for jobs that were traditionally all white. Whether or not it has had discriminatory job practices in the past, a company can use affirmative-action programs to remedy...
...Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Justice William Brennan, conceded that the lower courts' rulings had followed the letter of the 1964 law, but insisted that they were not within its spirit. The primary concern of Congress was with "the plight of the Negro in our economy," Brennan wrote. It would be "ironic indeed," he said, if Title VII was used to prohibit "all voluntary, private, race-conscious efforts to abolish traditional patterns" of discrimination...
...require nor permit quotas. Burger said that he would side with the majority if he were a Congressman, but that as a judge he had no business joining in "totally rewriting a crucial part" of the law. Said he: "Congress expressly prohibited the discrimination against Brian Weber the court approves...