The Civil Rights Act of 1990 was a bill that, had it been signed into law, would have made it easier for litigants in race or sex discrimination cases to win.

[4] While making its way through Congress, the bill was considered to be civil rights groups' number one legislative priority.

[5] Soon before the bill made it to the desk of then-President of the United States George H. W. Bush, it was criticized by the Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried.

In a New York Times op-ed, Fried (a ranking member of the Federalist Society who served as Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration from 1985-1989[6]), wrote that descriptions of the bill as the most important civil rights legislation in a quarter-century were "a public relations flimflam perpetrated by a cabal of overzealous civil rights plaintiffs' lawyers."

"[4][8] The Bush administration argued that the bill's provisions were strict enough that they would give employers "powerful incentives" to adopt quotas.