Sunday, April 12, 1998

Anybody could have seen that Jones' suit would fail

By Mack Eastus

What are we to think of Paula Corbin Jones and her much-ballyhooed "sexual harassment" suit against President Clinton?

From the beginning, we should have been skeptical of a lawsuit that rested on legal grounds as tenuous as this one does.

Normally, a plaintiff brings a sexual harassment suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (or an analogous state statute). Title VII, as it existed in 1991 when the alleged harassment occurred, required a complainant to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days after the offending conduct took place. The complainant must then obtain a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC and file suit in court within a fairly short period of time thereafter.

The policy behind these relatively brief deadlines is simple: Since discrimination cases so often turn on circumstantial and anecdotal evidence ("He called me a ..." or "She told me to do X or else she'd fire me"), which in turn puts a premium on witnesses' memories of what was said or done and by whom, then these sorts of suits should be brought to court when the events or statements that allegedly gave rise to them are still fresh in the witnesses' minds.

Undoubtedly, Jones' suit could not have complied with the 180-day requirement or the right-to-sue letter requirement. Had she filed a Title VII claim, the court would have thrown it out so fast it would have made even Cliff Jackson's head spin. Realizing this, her lawyers sued under 42 U.S.C. sections 1983 and 1985, which are post-Civil War statutes designed to allow citizens to seek redress for deprivations of their constitutional rights.

The last time I checked, the Constitution neither textually nor as a result of judicial construction contained a right not to be propositioned, which is essentially what Jones alleges. Courts generally find a violation of section 1983 in cases like Rodney King's, and meritorious claims under section 1985 appear quite infrequently and then only when a group has conspired to deprive someone's civil rights -- the KKK in Vidor comes quickly to mind.

In short, the attempt by Jones' lawyers to shoehorn a sexual harassment claim into one of these statutes should have been dismissed rather handily by the judge without seeing the south side of a jury.

If her claims were so weak, then her lawsuit begged the question of why it was brought at all. Ah, here, in my view, is where the "real" news story lies in all of this political intrigue.

First, there exists the likelihood that Cliff Jackson, the Clinton-hater and Little Rock lawyer who raised eyebrows last year in representing two Arkansas state troopers in their charges of sexual promiscuity on state time by then-Gov. Clinton, was behind the Jones complaint. Jackson has a grudge against Clinton for some real or perceived slight in the past, and he has proven he will do anything he can to embarrass the president.

Second, the Rev. Jerry Falwell stated on television a few days ago that he knew all about Jones' allegations in the Excelsior Hotel with Clinton, that they were all true. Moreover, charged Falwell, he had the names of 12 or so more women ready to tell similar stories involving sexual improprieties by Clinton. Hmmmm. Despite my initial inclination to toss away summarily anything Falwell says as the ravings of a religious right fanatic, this claim gives me pause.

Jerry, you and yours lost in '92. I am not naive enough to believe American politics operates like an Oxford debate, but I do believe the elected chief executive ought to have a fair chance to enact his programs and see if they work. Most citizens, I think, would agree with this proposition. Still, until Falwell and those of his ilk feel the same way, it is up to the press and ordinary citizens to speak out against their intolerance, their intransigence and their abuse of the political freedoms we hold so dear.

Mack Eastus is a retired property manager and retired district circulation manager for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News.