License bill could elicit suit

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 From the The Tennessean.

License bill could elicit suit
Opponents say English-only test is discrimination

By DAVID RYFE
For The Tennessean

Published: Sunday, 04/23/06

Advocates of a bill that would force people to take the Tennessee state
driver's license exam in English argue that it would enhance public
safety, but a lack of hard evidence about the risks posed by non-English
speaking motorists could put the state in legal hot water if the bill
becomes law, some experts said. Tennessee keeps no data to support or
dispel the safety claim, state officials said. Thus, no one knows if
preventing people with a limited command of English from driving would
make Tennessee's roads safer. The absence of statistics could make the
state vulnerable to a lawsuit based upon Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act, says Janice Snow Rodriguez, executive director of the Tennessee
Foreign Language Institute.

"It comes down to discrimination," she said. "People who are in every
other way within their right to get a driver's license, are prevented from
doing so." Sponsors of the bill are adamant that their primary concern in
proposing the legislation is road safety. My concern "mainly pertains to
public safety," Rep. Tommy Dubois, R-Columbia, has said. A "working
knowledge of English would make driving a lot safer." Sen. Bill Ketron,
R-Murfreesboro, adds that "from a safety (standpoint), citizens of
Tennessee need to have people who can read road signs."

Inquiries by the Tennessean have found no agency, public or private, state
or federal, that collects statistical data on the question. The Tennessee
Highway Patrol does not keep data on the numbers of non-English speakers
involved in highway traffic accidents. Moreover, the Department of Safety
does not even track how many people take a state foreign language driver's
license exam, spokeswoman Julie Oaks said. Rodriguez, of the Tennessee
Foreign Language Institute, cites guidelines from a 2001 U.S. Department
of Transportation notice which states in part that "assertions of safety
justifications" of the kind made in support of the English-only drivers'
test bill "would generally not be accepted unless accompanied by
statistical and/or scientific causality studies showing a positive
correlation between limited English proficiency and crash/injury rates
substantially higher than would be expected due to chance."

In other words, if confronted with a lawsuit, the state would have to
prove with numbers that drivers who do not speak English get in more
accidents. Alabama was hit with just this kind of lawsuit after it passed
an English-only law in 1990. In that suit, Martha Sandoval, a legal
Mexican immigrant, claimed that her civil rights were being violated. She
won in a lower federal court. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
against Sandoval, arguing that private individuals did not have a right to
sue unless they had been intentionally discriminated against.

Despite winning in the Supreme Court, Alabama continues to give its
driver's license exam in a dozen languages. Predictably enough, this
policy sparked yet another lawsuit, this one from people claiming that
providing foreign language exams violates state law. That case was
dismissed by a state judge earlier this week. Ketron said he believes that
the 2001 Supreme Court ruling will protect the state from a federal
lawsuit in the event that his bill becomes law.  "I've got evidence that
the federal government is the only one that can file a lawsuit based on
Title VI," he said. But his opponents argue that in the Sandoval case the
court ruled on a legal technicality that does not insulate the state from
a lawsuit.

"On the merits, this bill violates Title VI," says Stephen Fotopulos,
policy director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

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