What is a sound thinker like Tom Campbell doing sponsoring a bill to roll back a Supreme Court victory on civil rights? A first-term Republican representative from California, Mr. Campbell was formerly with the antitrust division of the Federal Trade Commission, and before that with the Justice Department. He boasts a PhD from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation was on gender discrimination. Associates say that in the past Mr. Campbell distinguished himself in the battle for a color-blind Constitution.
Yet Congressman Campbell was first out of the gate with a bill that would overturn the recent Wards Cove Packing v. Antonio decision, wherein the Court held that statistics alone were not enough to prove racial discrimination. All his bill would do, Mr. Campbell says, is “take us back to the way the law was before June of this year.” He insists that there is nothing in it requiring quotas, and he even managed to get a number of other conservatives to sign on to his bill, including Robert S. Walker (R., Pa.).
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