The Civil Rights Act of 1990 was a bill that, had it been signed into law, would have made it easier for litigants in race or sex discrimination cases to win. It was introduced into the

101st United States Congress The 101st United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1989 ...

on February 7, 1990, by Senator

Edward Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...

(D-MA) in the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

, and by

Augustus Hawkins Augustus Freeman Hawkins (August 31, 1907 – November 10, 2007) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served in the California State Assembly from 1935 to 1963 and the U.S. House Of Representatives from 1963 to 1991. Over the co ...

(D-CA) in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

. While making its way through Congress, the bill was considered to be civil rights groups' #1 legislative priority. Soon before the bill made it to the desk of then-

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...

, it was criticized by the

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

professor

Charles Fried Charles Anthony Fried (born April 15, 1935) is an American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a visiting professor ...

. In a ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...

, Fried wrote that descriptions of the bill as the most important civil rights legislation in a quarter-century were "a public relations flimflam perpetrated by a cabal of overzealous civil rights plaintiffs' lawyers." He concluded by saying that Bush should "veto this bill in its present form." On October 22, 1990, President Bush vetoed the bill, claiming that it "employs a maze of highly legalistic language to introduce the destructive force of

quota Quota may refer to: Economics * Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country * Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture * Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe * Indi ...

s into our national employment system." The Bush administration argued that the bill's provisions were strict enough that they would give employers "powerful incentives" to adopt quotas. Supporters of the bill argued that, contrary to Bush's claims, the bill would not have led employers to adopt quotas. For example,

Benjamin Hooks Benjamin Lawson Hooks (January 31, 1925 – April 15, 2010) was an American civil rights leader and government official. A Baptist minister and practicing attorney, he served as executive director of the National Association for the Advancemen ...

, the then-executive director of the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

, said he was "at a loss" as to why Bush described the legislation as a quota bill. Congress attempted to override his veto on October 24, but their attempt failed in the Senate by one vote to achieve the two-thirds majority required.

References

External links

Text of the summary of the Civil Rights Act of 1990
1990 in American law 101st United States Congress Civil Rights Acts United States proposed federal civil rights legislation {{US-fed-statute-stub