[lg policy] Alabama English-only drivers' license testing revisited

Dennis Baron debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU
Fri Apr 23 18:35:53 UTC 2010 

Very nice essay, Hal. Thanks for the link.

What's interesting to me is that English-only has become not just a  
state issue, but an issue at the municipal level, as well as at the  
level of individual agencies (the Dallas PD) schools (Wichita) and  
workplace's (the Salvation Army Thrift Shop in Framingham; Geno's  
Steaks in Philly). Only this week a number of my students objected  
vehemently to the singing of the national anthem in Spanish. When I  
showed them Stephen Colbert's satirical take on this and asked them,  
"How many people can understand the sacred scriptures of their in the  
languages they were originally written in?" they replied that Bible  
translation was ok, since the bible was universal. This is what we're  
up against.

Dennis
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage








On Apr 23, 2010, at 9:30 AM, Harold Schiffman wrote:

> All,
>
> Back in 2005 I wrote a paper on a case of English-only drivers'  
> license testing that eventually went to
> the Supreme Court, but then didn't result in kind of massive effect  
> I thought it might have on English-only
> legislation in this country.  Now, in upcoming elections, the issue  
> has surfaced again, and an Alabama
> journalist has discovered my article (posted on my website--it never  
> got published) and cited it in his
> article on the subject:
>
>
> Tim James Might Want to Learn the History of “English Only” Driver’s  
> License Examinations in Alabama
>
> By TWAY Kris
> 2tweetsretweet
> It may be news to some, but we have tried to enforce English-only  
> driver’s license examinations before, and as Alabama is prone to do,  
> racked up millions of dollars in legal fees as a result.  Let’s take  
> a walk down memory lane (courtesy of Dr. Harold Schiffman at the  
> University of Pennsylvania)…
>
> From the 1970’s to 1991, Alabama offered the driver’s license exam  
> in 12 languages.  In 1990, the people of Alabama passed an “English  
> only” constitutional amendment (Amendment 509), which, after an  
> advisory opinion issued by then Attorney General Jimmy Evans, caused  
> the exam to only be offered in one language.  In 1996, the Southern  
> Poverty Law Center (SPLC) took up the case of Martha Sandoval a  
> Mexican-born Alabama citizen who had limited English proficiency and  
> was unable to pass the exam and thus had been arrested several times  
> for operating a vehicle without a license (a natural result of the  
> policy James is advocating).  The SPLC filed a federal class-action  
> lawsuit under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which  
> claimed that
>
> “the regulation had impermissible disparate impact on the basis of  
> national origin in violation of Title VI, and was not supported by  
> substantial legitimate justification.”
>
> The State lost in federal court in 1998 (and two months later  
> returned to offering the test in multiple languages).  The ruling  
> was upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  However, the U.S.  
> Supreme Court in a controversial 5-4 decision, overturned that  
> ruling in 2001.  So that left me with the question, why didn’t we go  
> back to offering the exam in English only?  Well, the decision of  
> the U.S. Supreme Court (Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275) held  
> only that a private citizen could not sue to enforce Title VI,  
> saying that role belonged exclusively to a government entity.  The  
> decision explicitly states that the only remedy for violation of  
> Title VI is for a federal agency to terminate a state’s funding.
>
> So yes, the decision belongs to the governor.  However, Governor  
> Riley (who has been a consistent supporter of English as the  
> official state language) has maintained that based on the US Supreme  
> Court ruling in Sandoval, returning to an English-only driver’s  
> license examination would put our federal transportation dollars in  
> jeopardy.  That didn’t satisfy some who had fought hard for the  
> English-only constitutional amendment and they sued in 2005 saying  
> the state was violating this amendment by offering the written exam  
> in multiple languages.  The Alabama Supreme Court (also in a 5-4  
> decision) ruled against the English-only advocates and said the  
> state was not in violation of the amendment.  Another lawsuit was  
> filed in 2008 and is still pending.
>
> So, apparently, Tim James disagrees with our current governor, and  
> is willing to put billions of dollars at risk to “save” some  
> undetermined amount because he’s a smart businessman?  Does that  
> make sense to you?
>
> http://www.theworldaroundyou.com/2010/04/23/tim-james-might-want-to-learn-the-history-of-english-only-drivers-license-examinations-in-alabama/
>
> ____________________________
>
> My own article is at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/alabama.html
>
>
> It's a small world...
>
>
> HS
>
>
> =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
>
> Harold F. Schiffman
>
> Professor Emeritus of
> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
> Dept. of South Asia Studies
> University of Pennsylvania
> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
>
> Phone:  (215) 898-7475
> Fax:  (215) 573-2138
>
> Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
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