e Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned the segregation of public facilities and was used in court actions against racial discrimination in the workplace. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 which required contractors doing business with the federal government to practice affirmative action: conscious and deliberate efforts to bring qualified minorities into jobs and educational opportunities from which they had been traditionally excluded. In 1970, Richard Nixon's Department of Labor required companies to create goals and timetables for the increased hiring of minorities. In 1971 affirmative action was extended to include women. In 1978, affirmative action came under attack when the U.S. Supreme Court voted on the Allan Bakke case, a white man who challenged a California medical school admission quota. The usage of quotas became illegal. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Richmond, Va., that the city's affirmative action remedy programs had to first prove a past record of discrimination against minorities and women. Also, contractors who could demonstrate they had tried but failed in their affirmative action efforts should not be denied government business. Cities and states scrambled to change the emphasis of their programs toward goals and away from mandates. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said statistical disparities fell short of proving specific acts of discrimination. She complained that an "amorphous claim that there has been discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota"(O'Conner). In 1992, Florida-based Publix Super Markets Inc. faced a public protest when a labor union and a consumer group objected to low numbers of minorities and women in management. Publix tried to counter the claims by pointing to employees such as Dwayne Jackson, 30, a produce manager in Casselberry, as an example of its commitment...
