Whitman pledges to defend affirmative action, plans to order race bias research

Ralph Siegel

Monday, March 13, 2000 | 4:42 a.m.

NEWARK, N.J. - Gov. Christie Whitman will order a study to document past racial discrimination in the New Jersey business community, she said Monday.

The governor said the study will provide the evidence that administration lawyers need to defend in court New Jersey's affirmative action business programs at Atlantic City casinos and elsewhere in state and perhaps local government.

A federal judge last month struck down what is called a "set-aside" requiring casinos to reserve at least 15 percent of their contracts for companies headed by women or minorities.

A lawsuit to fight the rule was brought by an association of area contractors who did not qualify for the set-aside, including construction contractors claiming their low bids were rejected. The judge found the set-aside to be unconstitutional because it created an "unequal playing field."

Whitman said the key to defending such programs is evidence that past racial bias placed minority entrepreneurs at a crippling disadvantage. When this can be proven, Whitman said, the courts will affirm programs to give these firms extra help in securing work from government agencies or state-regulated industries.

"We are going to defend affirmative action in court, and there shouldn't be any mistake about that," Whitman told reporters after addressing the matter at the BizTech 2000 conference here for minority and urban small businesses.

"We will be going forward (with the research) to find the constitutional basis for defending these cases," the governor said. "They have got to provide case-by-case examples of where discrimination has occurred in the past, where people have been locked out of the system."

Whitman said she will authorize the study in an executive order to be issued shortly. Such orders can be used for legal leverage while awaiting the outcome of the research. "The last ruling was on the casinos, but we feel that the challenges are going to come across the board," she said.

One of the problems state attorneys face in defending the casino set-aside is that since the industry began in 1978, the state's Casino Control Commission has monitored the hiring of minorities and the number of contracts awarded to minority firms.

Legally, this could mean it will be difficult to establish past discrimination in an industry that has existed for a short time and under close scrutiny.

But Whitman said the success of the casino policy is all the more reason to defend it. "Because they have had a good program, we shouldn't lose it. We want to enforce that, we want to encourage that, we want to make sure they don't back away from that," she said.

Many governors, especially fellow Republicans, have taken a harder line on affirmative action programs, but Whitman said her policies and theirs do not differ significantly because New Jersey programs do not have quotas, a legal flashpoint in other places.

"I don't support quotas either. What we are all trying to do as governors is to ensure that everyone in our state has a maximum opportunity to the prosperity that we have today," Whitman said. "I am sure there will be some political pressure, but there really shouldn't be. This is about everybody."