Off the Hook

The court tackles school taxes

For months the White House has been mired in a civil rights mess of its own making. Shortly after New Year's, the Reagan Administration decided to reverse a twelve-year-old policy and begin granting racially discriminatory schools the same tax breaks enjoyed by other private schools. A hail of protest thundered down, and ever since, the White House has been desperately seeking ways to escape the consequences of its ill-considered volte-face. Last week, to the relief of almost everyone, the Supreme Court agreed to settle the controversy. Since the Administration was no longer willing to argue its original position, the Justices concluded that a substitute advocate was needed. Their choice: William Coleman Jr., a distinguished black corporate lawyer and Gerald Ford's Secretary of Transportation.

It was a nearly unprecedented solution to an unprecedented muddle. The strange course of events began late on the afternoon of Jan. 8 with the dual announcement that the IRS was changing its established policy and the Justice Department was abandoning its Supreme Court case against two schools with discriminatory policies, Bob Jones University of Greenville, S.C., and North Carolina's Goldsboro Christian Schools. The stormy, and unforeseen, reaction soon brought President Reagan's "explanation" that he did not actually favor a tax break for the schools but thought the IRS had been exceeding its authority. So, he asked, would Congress please pass legislation specifically denying such schools any tax breaks? But Congress refused to oblige. For a month White House aides fidgeted. Then, on Feb. 25, after a federal appeals court had acted in another case to block the new IRS plans, the Administration asked the Supreme Court to end the impasse. A prompt response was expected, but Friday conference after Friday conference of the Justices went by without any word--until last week's announcement. Oral arguments will probably be heard in the fall.

The Justices had little in the court's past to guide them. In 1954 they appointed a special counsel when a challenge to the Virgin Islands' lenient divorce laws struck them as halfhearted. And the court has occasionally appointed lawyers for indigent or inadequately represented litigants, as it did in 1963 when Abe Fortas was asked to argue Clarence Gideon's landmark right-to-counsel case. But such examples are scarcely parallel. In the current tax cases, says Democratic Congressman Don Edwards of California, "the question is: 'Is the Justice Department interested in enforcing civil rights?'"

The court has found a universally respected man to take over for the Justice Department. Coleman, senior partner at the Washington office of the Los Angeles firm O'Melveny & Myers, is well equipped for what he considers "a great opportunity." Born to a middle-class Philadelphia couple, he experienced school discrimination firsthand. "When I was in high school and went out for the swimming team," he recalls, "they abolished the team rather than let me swim."

Coleman went on to top his class at Harvard Law School, and in 1948 became the Supreme Court's first black clerk, under Felix Frankfurter. A few years later he helped write the winning brief in Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed separate-but-equal schools. But he believes the battle is far from won. In a recent article, he wrote: "For black Americans, racial equality is a tradition without a past. Perhaps one day America will be colorblind. It takes an extraordinary ignorance of actual life in America today to believe that day has come."

For all his civil rights work--and the two "satisfying" years in the Ford Cabinet--the portly Coleman, 61, has spent most of his career as a high-salaried advocate for corporate clients like Ford and IBM. With his connections, chances are Coleman will hardly miss the Government's help as he prepares his school argument. "This firm has 285 lawyers," says he. "We will put all the resources on this case that it needs. And before I finish, I know I'll heavily involve some of my classmates and colleagues at Harvard Law School." There seem to be plenty of precedents for them to cite. Five federal cases have involved tax privileges for schools that discriminate. The schools have lost every time. Perhaps with Coleman's help, the Supreme Court can finally lay the matter to rest.

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