Supreme Court Upholds Validity of Affirmative Action in Employment

    SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS VALIDITY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 
IN EMPLOYMENT 

For immediate release For further information: 
Wednesday, June 27, 1979 Vernon Jordan 

President, National Urban League 
(212) 644-6500 

Wiley A. Branton 
Dean, Howard University School of 

Law 
(202) 686-6837 

Julius L. Chambers, President 
Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel 
NAACP Legal Defense Fund 
(2112) “586-8397; 

New York, N.Y., June 27 -- The following statement was 

issued today by the National Urban League, Howard University 

and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in reaction to the Supreme 

Court decision in Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum: 

Today's Supreme Court decision upholding the lawful- 

ness of voluntary affirmative action program in American 

industry should be supported by all Americans concerned with 

racial justice. It removes a major obstacle to compliance with 

affirmative action. The problems of unemployment, under-employment 

and race discrimination faced by black workers and job seekers 

throughout the economy is one of America's most severe problems. 

The type of voluntary affirmative action program involved in 

the Weber case is one sensible way to try to solve that 

problem. it inspires hope that the nation will embark on a new 

thrust to secure equality for minority citizens. 

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Weber - 2 - 

But we must be mindful of the fact that Weber takes 

place against a backdrop of a growing gap between blacks and 

whites. Blacks are experiencing depression-level unemployment 

and are locked into low wage marginal jobs. There is still 

massive resistance to black needs as was seen in the support 

given Weber. 

The agreement between Kaiser Aluminum Company and the 

Steel Workers Union which the Court upheld today provided for a 

training program to bring black workers into craft jobs in 

aluminum plants. So today's decision may have an important 

impact on black employment opportunities. It offers a ray of 

hope that affirmative action will become an important tool to 

forge racial equality in America. But the decision itself does 

not bring that equality about. It is just the beginning, not 

the end, of the fight for affirmative ation. 

The Court's sanction of voluntary affirmative action 

program must be joined to the moral imperatives of racial 

equality. It suggests a positive obligation for private 

employers to press forward with broad comprehensive affirmative 

action programs. 

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Weber aie, = 

With this decision, the Supreme Court did not 

definitively decide all affirmative action issues that might 

arise in education, employment and elsewhere but it is now well 

on the way to completing a general guide for decision of such 

issues. Bakke v. University of California, decided last year, 

held constitutional affirmative action programs adopted by the 

universities for the purposes of promoting academic diversity. 

Opinions by Brennan, Marshall, White and Blackmun went further 

in holding that affirmative action in admissions to compensate 

for general societal discrimination is constitutional. Two 

years earlier, in United Jewish Organization v. Carey, the 

Court held that affirmative action is constitutional in drawing 

electoral district lines. Earlier, in a Charlotte, North Carolina 

school case, the Court held that affirmative action in school 

integration may take into account racial proportion in assigning 

students to schools. 

A number of years before that the Court made a similar 

decision involving teachers' assignment in a Montgomery, Alabama 

case. There is now, on the whole, an across-the-board legal 

thrust towards recognition of affirmative action on behalf 

of blacks where there has been past discrimination either of a 

specific or general societal nature. 

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Weber =a 

We hope that the Administration, the Congress and the 

American people will wholeheartedly support today's Supreme 

Court's decision and that the decision will encourage people of 

goodwill throughout the country to take voluntary actions to 

fulfill the legal and moral obligation to redress the exclusion 

of black workers from all sectors of the American economy. 

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