ProEnglish
News Release
April 24, 2001
(Arlington, VA) Responding to press reports, the head of ProEnglish, an organization that specializes in the legal defense of official English laws, warned Oakland’s City Council against adopting an ordinance that discriminates against English speaking residents in hiring. “It is one thing to hire or train interpreters that may be needed for legitimate government needs such as protecting the public’s health or safety. But to make fluency in a foreign language a requirement for hiring or promoting city employees is discriminatory and clearly illegal in our view,” said ProEnglish executive director K.C. McAlpin. “Such a requirement would automatically disqualify hundreds of thousands of native born residents from employment opportunities including a disproportionate number of African Americans,” he charged.
“That the Oakland City Council is even considering such an action reveals a ‘let them eat cake’ attitude toward African Americans and other English speaking residents on the part of some council members reminiscent of the widely condemned decision (later overturned) in Gutierrez v. Municipal Court of the Southeast Judicial District,”[1] McAlpin added. In that case municipal court employees racially insulted co-workers in a language they could not understand; the 9th Circuit Court’s initially suggested that the employer’s remedy was to fire African-American employees and replace them with Spanish-speaking supervisors. Adopting such a policy would amount to a policy of reverse assimilation and send a message that learning to speak English was no longer necessary.
A bilingual-only
hiring policy would violate the equal protection clause of the U.S.
constitution and similar protections against unequal treatment that
exist under California’s constitution and statutes. McAlpin pledged
to use all available means including a possible lawsuit and complaints
before the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to defend the interests
of Oakland’s English-speaking citizens.
Mr. McAlpin is available for interviews on official English and related issues. Call (703) 816-8821.
[1] 838 F.2d 1031 (9th Cir. 1988), vacated, 490 U.S. 1016 (1989).
