“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. A lot, when it comes to politics, it seems. What the liberals have baptized as “the Civil Rights Restoration Bill” should really be named “the Civil Wrongs Bill of 1987.”
Sponsored by Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in the Senate as S. 557 and Augustus Hawkins (D-CA) in the House as H.R. 1214, this bill is the liberals’ biggest grab for federal power since the end of World War II. That’s a tall statement, considering their many overreaching and extravagant bills of the last 40 years, but it’s true.
Those affected by the bill would be practically everybody who receives any federal money, directly or indirectly. The bill would make subject to federal regulation all grocery stores that accept food stamps, nursing homes that treat Medicare patients, banks that deposit Social Security checks, and farmers who receive crop subsidies or price supports.
All state and local governments would be swept into the Civil Wrongs Bill’s net of control. The acceptance of federal money, directly or indirectly, by one part of a program or service would make the entire program or agency subject to new regulatory control.
Every public, private and religious school and college would be covered in its entirety if any of its programs accept any form of federal assistance, such as a free lunch program. All these educational institutions, including religious ones, would be required to conform to a raft of new federal regulations.
The proposed bill would also require these private and religious institutions to comply with the section of Title IX that requires schools and colleges that receive federal aid to treat abortion for students in the same manner as any medical or hospital benefit, service, plan or policy, and to treat abortion for employees like a temporary disability for all job-related purposes.
Any hospital that has any teaching component (such as student nurses), or is affiliated with any educational institution, would have to comply with this same mandatory abortion requirement. The bill would override conscience clauses in state laws and mandate almost all hospitals to perform abortions, even if abortion is against the hospital’s policy, and even if the anti-abortion policy is for religious reasons.
The Civil Wrongs Bill’s sponsors have indicated a willingness to accept a religious tenets amendment. However, that would not solve the problem because it would apply only if the hospital or educational institution were controlled by a church. Very few hospitals or colleges could meet that test. It could not be met, for example, by Notre Dame or Georgetown universities, which have long been controlled by lay boards.
It’s no wonder that Assistant Attorney General Bradford Reynolds called the Civil Wrongs Bill “a vehicle for expanding to the fullest extent possible the reach and role of federal bureaucracy into every facet of the public and private affairs of all citizens.”
The tortured history of this bill began with the passage of the Education Amendments of 1972, colloquially known as Title IX. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational institution that receives federal aid.
A small coed college in Pennsylvania, Grove City College, refused to sign the regulatory papers because it had never accepted federal funds. In 1977, the Carter Administration initiated proceedings against the college on the ground that it was an indirect recipient of aid because it admitted students who received federally guaranteed student loans.
The case went to the Supreme Court and, in the 1984 case called Grove City College v. Bell, the Court handed down a two-faceted decision that attempted to let both sides win, but pleased nobody. This decision held that the enrollment of even one student receiving a federal student loan made Grove City College subject to Title IX, but that, if Grove City were found to discriminate, only the “specific program or activity” receiving federal funds could be punished by a cutoff of federal funds.
Incidentally, no allegation of discrimination was ever raised against Grove City College. If any woman there had ever felt discriminated against, you can be sure you would have seen her on the television evening news.
Feminist groups raised a mighty media clamor about this “program specific” requirement. They want the federal power to punish an entire institution if any charge of discrimination is made.
Most important, they want the long hand of federal control to snoop on every local institution of all kinds, requiring a mountain of paperwork and on-site compliance reviews. They want federal agencies to have the power to judge discrimination by equality of results rather than equality of opportunity.
Our current anti-discrimination statutes are functioning very well. We don’t need a new army of federal busybodies to expand them.
