Justice Dept. Drops Bid to End Hiring Quotas in Indianapolis

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials, retreating in the wake of two recent Supreme Court rulings, abandoned efforts Monday to eliminate minority and female hiring quotas designed to cure past discrimination in the Indianapolis police and fire departments.

The move was seen as a signal that the department may drop its opposition to similar court orders covering employment discrimination in 51 other states, cities and counties.

The action was taken by the department’s civil rights division, headed by Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, who previously had sought to invalidate all affirmative action plans that went beyond aiding actual victims of racial or sexual bias.

Will Review Other Actions

Department spokesman John Wilson said that, in light of the Supreme Court rulings handed down July 2, officials do not believe that their motion to modify court orders in Indianapolis should proceed. A review of similar motions previously filed by the Justice Department in other localities is under way, Wilson said.

The department formally filed a withdrawal motion to halt its action in Indianapolis, and the motion was granted. It had filed its original action in April, 1985, seeking to remove employment goals and timetables affecting city police and firefighters.

Reynolds began his campaign to alter civil rights consent decrees in which the federal government was a party after the Supreme Court issued a 1984 ruling in a case involving firefighters in Memphis, Tenn. At that time, the justices struck down a court order that had led to white firefighters’ being laid off to save the jobs of blacks with less seniority.

But the high court’s recent decisions showed that Reynolds had interpreted the 1984 ruling too broadly.

Interprets Ruling

Writing for the majority last month, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said that the Memphis ruling merely prohibited a court from interfering with a valid seniority system and did not prevent courts from ordering broad, race-conscious programs “to dismantle prior patterns of employment discrimination and to prevent discrimination in the future.”

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. added that civil rights statutes do not require that all programs be limited to benefiting actual victims. In addition, he said, a court-imposed 29% goal of a New York program upheld by the justices was sufficiently flexible and limited in duration.

In several states and cities, local officials had expressed opposition to the Justice Department’s move to alter existing court decrees, arguing that hiring goals and timetables are widely accepted and were working well.

In Indianapolis, Republican Mayor William H. Hudnut III said Monday: “I have contended from the outset, when the Justice Department filed its motion (in 1985), that its position was wrong legally, morally and politically.”