Bush Accepts Rights Bill, Ending Stalemate : Legislation: Agreement breaks a yearlong impasse. Sununu says the compromise proposal eliminates the prospect of racial quotas. Sen. Kennedy lauds the plan.

By WILLIAM J. EATON

Oct. 25, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — Breaking a yearlong impasse, President Bush agreed Thursday night to accept a compromise civil rights bill worked out with moderate Republican senators, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu announced.

“It appears the proposal is acceptable and if there are no additional changes to what is there, the President is willing to sign that bill,” Sununu said.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the leading Democratic advocate of the long-stalled legislation, immediately proclaimed the outcome as a “significant victory for civil rights.”

Democratic senators were called to a caucus today to consider the compromise proposal worked out in daylong negotiations in the office of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), a key participant in the bargaining who had tried for months to get White House backing for his compromise approach, approved the outcome of the talks Thursday but noted that nothing was final until the Senate voted on it.

“My view is that progress has been made and a deal is within our grasp,” Dole told the Senate earlier Thursday evening.

If Democrats embrace the latest version of the bill, it could be passed quickly in the Senate and sent to a conference with the House. The measure could be on the President’s desk before Congress adjourns later next month.

Sununu, emerging from a late-night meeting in Dole’s office, said the compromise language eliminated the prospect that employers would be driven to use racial quotas in hiring and promotion. “It is a non-quota bill,” Sununu said.

The surprising announcement came only a day after the Office of Management and Budget denounced Danforth’s earlier plan as a “quota bill” that would stack the deck against employers and virtually compel them to hire and promote workers by race or gender.

At issue is a complex provision in the bill that would bar employers’ use of hiring standards that appear neutral on their face but screen out women and racial minorities in practice.

Under the bill, business firms would have to justify the use of such practices if they were unrelated to a worker’s ability to do the job.

For example, a height requirement for police officers may exclude women but have little bearing on their ability to perform the job, or a requirement of a high school diploma for a janitor’s job might not be allowed under Danforth’s proposed legislation.

Few details were available on the compromise plan. Sources close to the negotiations, however, said the proposal that emerged would allow women who are victims of sexual harassment or intentional discrimination to get higher damage awards than Danforth or the President originally proposed.

The bill’s provisions against sex discrimination or harassment drew strong support after hearings on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexually harassing a subordinate in previous federal jobs.

But the compromise legislation includes a cap on damages for women victims of discrimination--a provision that is sure to be opposed by many members of the Senate when the measure comes to the floor. Victims of racial discrimination are entitled to unlimited damages under current law.

“My principal regret is that there’s a cap on damages for discrimination against women but the cap is still a substantial new remedy for large numbers of women who have no realistic remedy today,” Kennedy said in a statement.

There was no explanation for the apparent sudden turnabout in Bush’s position on the legislation from a steady drumbeat of denunciation to acceptance of its major provisions.

It is possible, however, that the Administration was having trouble gathering enough Republican votes--34--to sustain a veto of the bill. Danforth reportedly had 64 or 65 votes in favor of his compromise, including seven or eight Republicans, with a half-dozen other GOP lawmakers listed as undecided.

Bush was under increasing fire from Democrats on the civil rights bill, as well as from such Senate Republicans as William S. Cohen of Maine, who charged that he was playing racial politics to get votes at the expense of equity for women and racial minorities.

At any rate, both Sununu and Kennedy, a liberal, were able to claim victory after the closed-door talks that excluded both civil rights organizations and business groups that had sharply clashing views on the legislation.

“We finally were able to get language accepted that eliminated the prospect of quotas,” Sununu said. “That’s a very significant change.”

But Kennedy countered in his statement: “The Administration has backed off its quota charge and the quota issue is dead.”

Some White House aides felt there was political dynamite in the charge that Democrats were seeking to impose racial or gender hiring quotas--an issue that was employed successfully by Sen. Jesse Helms (C.) in winning reelection in 1988.

But other Republicans cautioned that it would be dangerous to use “wedge” issues that would divide the electorate and could backfire on the President in his anticipated reelection campaign.

Meantime, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) took a more cautious attitude toward the negotiations.

“The question is whether they will be carried forward to agreement, or whether we’ll simply reach a point where no agreement is possible and we proceed to resolve the matter here on the Senate floor,” he said Thursday night.

White House counsel C. Boyden Gray and key GOP senators, including Danforth, were huddled in Dole’s office most of the day. This followed a fruitless meeting Wednesday night between Danforth and Gray in search of a compromise.

As the talks progressed on Thursday, however, Sununu joined the meeting and Kennedy later arrived at Dole’s office shortly before the announcement by Sununu that Bush would endorse the results.

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.