Backdated Memo on Rights is Conceded News Clipping

    A EA YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, JANUARY 1. aid 

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Backdated Memo on Rights Is Conceded 
  

By ROBERT PEAR 
Special to The New York Times 

“- WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 — The Jus: 
tice - Department has acknowledged 
Kmckdating a document that figures 
“prominently ina Foje rights case in 
“New Orleans. « 

~ William Bradford ‘Reynolds, Assist- 
—.ant Attorney General for civil rights, 
-said there was ‘‘nothing nefarious or 
sinister’’ about the dating. : 

But lawyers for black residents of 
New Orleans disagree, and they say 
that Mr. Reynolds approved a Congres- 
‘sional redistricting plan that illegally 
“diluted the voting strength of blacks. 
The document in question, a memorans 
dum “to the file,”’ purports to give Mr, 
-Reynolds’s reasons for not objecting to 
the plan. The blacks contend that he 
created the document after he made the 

- decision, to justify his action in light of 
-pending litigation. 7 
Internal Justice ent docu- 
ments indicate that Mr. Reynolds over- 
-ruled the recommendations of career 
“lawyers in the voting rights section of 
the department who had urged him to 
object to the new arrangement of dis- 
tricts in and around New Orleans. - 

~ - Five Residents Have Sued 
«Five black residents of the city, rep- 

resented by the NAACP Legal LB 
-and Educational Fund Inc., have sued 
the Gov. David C. Treen of Louisiana, a 

- Republican, in a case on behalf of all 
- black voters in the state. It is scheduled 
to-go to trial in a Louisiana Federal Dis- 

-trict Court Jan. 31. The suit asks the 
court to issue an injunction barring fur- 
“ther use of the new C ional dis- 
tricts, which were used in last year’s 

elections. 
~ Representatives Robert L. Living- 

“ston. Jr., a Republican, and Lindy 
_Boggs, a Democrat, were re-elected 
~without opposition in November in the 
“First and Second Districts, ve- 
ly. The districts cover all of the city and 

_partof the suburbs of New Orleans. 
+» The three-judge Federal panel may 

.- ‘he’required to address a question with 
national implications: whether the 

“state had a duty to create one Congres- 

  

  

sional districy with a majority of blacks, 
rather than two districts with signifi- 
cant percentages of blacks. .’  - 

The plaintiffs say that Louisiana au- 
thorities improperly rejected a plan 
under: which blacks would have been 
concentrated in one district. with a 
population that was 54 percent black. 
Instead, they say, the black population 
was split. : 

The complaint says that the plan fi- 
nally adopted by the State Legislature 
established a First Congressional Dis- 
trict with over 30 sides, creating a 
rough approximation of the cartoon | 
character Donald Duck out of the Sec- 
ond Congressional District.” 

White Population Shrinks 

Louisiana, like most other states, re- 
drew its districts to reflect the results of 
the 1980 census. .In 1970's, the black 
population of the city increased, so that 
blacks, who accounted for 45 percent of 
the population in 1970, constituted 55 
percent in 1880. The population of the 
city and the number of white resicents 
declined in those years. 

Under the Voting.Rights Act, Louisi- 
ana had to submit its reapportionment 
plan to the Justice Department for ap- 
proval before it could hold elections. 
Mr. Reynolds a the plan on 
June 18, 1982. The black plaintiffs con- 
tend that Mr. Reynolds's review was 
“highly ' and tainted by 
“political considerations’’ unrelated to 
the purpose of the Voting Rights Act. He 
denies this. 

In his memorandum, Mr. Reynolds 
said that the plan was “not racially dis- 
criminatory in either purpose or ef- 
fect.”” The Legislature, he said, consid- 
ered an alternative plan that would 
have created a district with a larger 

e of black voters, but ulti- 
mately rejected it “for political — not 
racial — reasons.” Blacks suffered no 
‘dilution in voting strength,’’ he wrote. 

The memorandum was dated June 18. 
However, Gerald W. Jones, chief of the 
voting section of the Justice Depart- 
ment, said that officials believe it was 
typed in mid-July. Mr. Jones received 
the document on July 19, according to   

notes he made at the Sie C. Lani 
Guinier, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal 
Defense Fund who used to work at the : 

a To lu Me version 0 .  Reynolds’s 
memorandum, the word ‘June’ had 
been typed over ‘‘July.” She said she | 
had examined the original with the per- | 
mission of department officials. : 

“To Conform With Decision’ 

Mr. Reynolds said the word ‘July’ 
might have been typed in error. “It 
could be that whoever was typing it hit 
the wrong letters and went back and 
corrected it,” hesaid. 

In any event, he said, “The memo 
was written after the decision was 
made,” and was dated ‘‘to conform" 
with the date of the decision.’”’ However, | 
he said, he wrote a first draft, in long- 

  
hand, soon after making the decision. 

-In February 1982, Mr. Jones sent a | 
routine letter to the office of the Attor- 
ney General of Louisiana for in- | 
formation bmeuded in aes Juslysis ot fe 
Congressil redistricting . He | 
asked, among other things, 2 hi i 
tain statements attributed to Governor J 
Treen, who had threatened to veto the | 
first redistricting proposal. 

Mr. Reynolds said that the references 
to the Governor were “unnecessarily - 
rude.” Accordingly, the letter was with- 
drawn by the Justice Department, sent 
back to Mr. Reynolds and replaced with 
a letter making no explicit. reference to ! 
‘Mr. Treen’s statements. 

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