Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. wrote memos as a young Justice Department lawyer that advocated restricting civil rights enforcement beyond that favored by top officials in President Ronald Reagan's administration.

Roberts, 50, nominated to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, probably will be asked about the memos at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that begin Sept. 6.

``On the areas of these documents, I think it's pretty clear about where he was coming from,'' Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a member of the panel, said last week about civil rights memos written by Roberts when he worked for Reagan.

In a Dec. 8, 1981, memo, Roberts supported an Education Department plan to exempt colleges from civil rights laws if the only federal money they received was for student financial aid. The Reagan administration narrowed its enforcement of the law without going as far as Roberts had recommended.

``The argument against the Department of Education's proposed regulations is primarily that they would overturn a long- established administrative interpretation of the statutes,'' Roberts wrote in a memo released by the National Archives and Records Administration. ``This argument will carry weight with some courts, but is certainly not strong enough to prevent us from arguing the contrary.''

Federal Aid

The Reagan administration ultimately adopted a policy that rejected Roberts's approach while still curtailing the coverage of the civil rights laws. The administration said only programs receiving federal money were covered by the gender discrimination ban of the 1972 civil rights law and other statutes. That meant that the law covered college admissions offices if they distributed federal education grants or administered government- guaranteed student loans.

The White House today said the memos should be viewed in a broader context.

The memos reflect Roberts's legal analysis, not his personal views, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. ``President Bush has nominated people to the bench who are committed to faithful interpretation of the Constitution, and John Roberts, over time through memos he has written and testimony in front of Congress, has proven to be just that type of nominee,'' she said.

Special Assistant

As special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, Roberts participated in a debate within the Reagan administration over a broad range of civil rights programs, including affirmative action in hiring that officials said enforced racial quotas.

During that era, civil rights groups accused William Bradford Reynolds, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, of retreating from enforcing laws barring race and sex discrimination.

In one case, Roberts argued that Reynolds was being too aggressive in enforcing a ban on sex discrimination. Roberts, in a Feb. 12, 1982, memo, urged Smith to reject Reynolds's recommendation that the Justice Department join in a private lawsuit by female inmates alleging sex bias at Kentucky state prisons.

Roberts said intervening would be ``inconsistent'' with ``your judicial restraint effort.''

Kentucky Suit

The Kentucky inmates' lawsuit charged that male prisoners got better vocational education opportunities than women, in violation of the Constitution's equal-protection clause and the 1972 federal anti-discrimination law.

``Many reasonable justifications for the Kentucky practices can be readily advanced, such as economies of scale calling for certain programs for male prisoners but not for the many fewer female prisoners,'' Roberts wrote in the 1982 memo. ``If equal treatment is required, the end result in this time of tight state prison budgets may be no programs for anyone.''

The attorney general rejected Roberts's advice, and the Justice Department joined the case to help win a federal court decision that the vocational education system discriminated against female inmates.

Roberts's memos fit a ``pattern of his being even more conservative than the conservative Reagan Justice Department when it came to civil rights and women's rights,'' said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the Washington-based National Women's Law Center, which advocates for women's rights.

A `Devastating' Result

Roberts's argument to reject bias suits because of their expense and cost ``would have been devastating to discrimination law in general,'' Greenberger said. ``Anytime there is an entrenched system, there is going to be costs involved in dismantling discrimination.''

Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, an Alexandria, Virginia-based group that supports Bush's nominees, said the memos show Roberts supports ``the core principle of equality that is part of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.''

In a case that reached the Supreme Court, Grove City College in Pennsylvania challenged Reagan administration regulations related to sex-discrimination by colleges.

The justices sided with the administration's policy that only those programs that receive federal funds were covered by the anti-discrimination law. That prompted Congress to enact the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 that authorized the government to end sex bias in college athletic programs even if those departments received no federal money.

`Radical' Expansion

In a July 24, 1985, memo written when he was an associate White House counsel, Roberts said the proposed legislation, then being debated in Congress, would ``radically expand the civil rights laws to areas of private conduct never before considered covered.'' The administration supported an alternative proposal by Republican Senator Robert Dole of Kansas.

By 1985, Roberts had accepted the Reagan administration's policy that federal student financial aid to a college would subject the institution's admissions office to the anti- discrimination law.

Still, ``if the entire institution is to be covered,'' Roberts wrote, ``it should be on the basis of something more solid than federal aid to students.''

Roberts acknowledged that the administration's adoption of his position ``would precipitate a firestorm of criticism, with little if any chance of success.''

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 4, 2005 00:04 EDT