Ronald Reagan agreed with conservatives that the nation had moved too far in guaranteeing rights to minority groups. Crying “reverse discrimination,” conservatives maintained that affirmative action unfairly hurt whites, ignoring statistics showing that minorities and white women still lagged far behind white men in opportunities and income. Black labor leader Cleveland Robinson pointed to the difficulty of achieving equal opportunity in a faltering economy, calling full employment “the basic ingredient of successful affirmative action.” Without it, “you will have both blacks and whites fighting for the same job.” Intense mobilization by civil rights groups, educational leaders, labor, and even corporate America prevented the administration from abandoning affirmative action, and the Supreme Court upheld important antidiscrimination policies. Moreover, against Reagan’s wishes, Congress extended the Voting Rights Act with veto-proof majorities. The administration did, however, limit civil rights enforcement by appointing conservatives to the Justice Department, the Civil Rights Commission, and other agencies as well as by slashing their budgets.

Congress stepped in to defend antidiscrimination programs after the Justice Department, in the case of Grove City v. Bell (1984), persuaded the Supreme Court to severely weaken Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, a key law promoting equal opportunity in education. In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act over Reagan’s veto, reversing the administration’s victory in Grove City and banning government funding of any organization that practiced discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age.

The Grove City decision reflected a rightward movement in the federal judiciary, on which liberals had counted as a powerful ally. With the opportunity to appoint half of the 761 federal court judges and three new Supreme Court justices, President Reagan encouraged the rightward trend by carefully selecting conservative candidates. The full impact of these appointments became clear after Reagan left office, as the Court allowed states to impose restrictions that weakened access to abortion for poor and rural women, reduced protections against employment discrimination, and whittled down legal safeguards against the death penalty.