Quota Conflict

Carter opts for goals instead

Allan Bakke. Before long the name may well become a household word. In potentially the most important civil rights case since Brown v. Board of Education, the would-be medical student is suing the University of California for refusing to admit him, a white, while accepting blacks who were less qualified. The Carter Administration becomes involved this week when the Justice Department files an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, which will take up the case next month. The basic issue: quotas and "reverse discrimination."

Forced to take a stand but trying to find a middle way, Jimmy Carter has rejected quotas. Blacks, who voted for him overwhelmingly, wanted him to back the university's position that some places can be set aside for less qualified, minority students. Opponents of quotas have also been vocal: businessmen, labor unions and universities, moderate and conservative whites, and some minorities, like Jews, who feel they can only lose in a quota system.

While rejecting quotas, the Administration brief was expected to support more nebulous "goals" to achieve racial balance. Drawing a fine line, Justice lawyers have argued that race can be a consideration in the selection of applicants but must not be the only one. Said one draft of the brief, which was being revised right down to the wire: "We doubt that it is ever proper to use race to close any portion of the class for competition by members of all races. It is one thing to give a minority applicant the sort of consideration that will assist him in competing fairly against other applicants; it is quite another to set aside a number of slots for which interracial competition is precluded."

To show how a constitutional form of affirmative action might work, Justice experts cited the hypothetical case of a disadvantaged black college applicant with a 3.5 average (out of a maximum of 4). He could be considered to show more ''motivation and determination to succeed" than a middle-class white with the same average, and thus be "more deserving of admission."

Even this delicately balanced brief was not acceptable to some Cabinet members, who engaged in a lively debate with the President last week. HEW Secretary Joseph Califano argued that un less the criticism of quotas was "softened," hundreds of affirmative-action programs under negotiation by his department would be jeopardized. The two blacks in the Cabinet were equally adamant. HUD Secretary Patricia Harris maintained that housing and job discrimination would be encouraged, and United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young warned that the Administration's position on Bakke would never be forgotten by blacks. Carter reportedly maintained that he was inclined to give the edge to affirmative action wherever possible, but felt that the brief made a forceful argument against the rigid quotas at issue in the Bakke case.

The White House hopes that the fact that the brief was originally drafted by two blacks--Solicitor General Wade McCree and Assistant Attorney General Drew Days III--might help to mute some of the expected criticism.

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