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Prohibiting Students From Speaking Spanish On Bus Is Unconstitutional And Discriminatory, Says Group
LAS VEGAS – Forbidding
Esmeralda County public high school students from speaking Spanish while riding
the school bus violates their free speech rights and discriminates against
children of Latino backgrounds, charged the American Civil Liberties Union and
the ACLU of Nevada in a letter sent today to Esmeralda County School District
Superintendent Robert Aumaugher. The ACLU requests that the school district
rescind the ban on Spanish immediately.
“The Supreme Court has
repeatedly emphasized that students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights at
the schoolhouse gate,’” said Jennifer Chang, staff attorney with the ACLU
Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Not allowing these kids to speak their native
language on the bus not only violates their most basic free speech rights, but
it isolates and discriminates against them in a way that I thought Rosa Parks
put an end to decades ago.”
The Esmeralda School
District’s
policy that prohibits speaking Spanish on the bus was approved by the Esmeralda
County School Board in October 2007. It affects about a dozen high school
students from a small farming and ranching community in Esmeralda who are bused
by the Esmeralda County school district several miles – over an hour each
way – to Tonopah High School in neighboring
Nye County. As a consequence of the rule, those whose English
skills are weak must refrain almost entirely from speaking during the long bus
ride. Since all Spanish is banned on the bus, the rule also prevents all
students from discussing or completing their Spanish homework assignments while
on the bus.
Nye County has no such discriminatory policy that prohibits
speaking Spanish on the bus or at school.
“During the bus ride to and
from school there is no scheduled scholastic instruction,” said Lee Rowland,
staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada. “Yet while English-speaking students can
carry on personal conversations that don’t further any educational goals,
Spanish-speaking students must sit in silence.”
By singling out and
prohibiting the use of Spanish, the ACLU’s letter points out, the school
district sends the message that Spanish-speakers, the majority of whom are
Latino, are inferior. Because the language people choose to speak closely
reflects their culture and where they are from, restricting the use of languages
violates federal prohibitions against discrimination based on national origin.
“The superintendent may think his rule is helping students learn
English,” said Maggie McLetchie, staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada. “But in
fact, he is encouraging division by excluding and humiliating Latino students
who are an important part of the student body.”
The ACLU has requested
to meet with Aumaugher soon to resolve the matter of the school district’s
policy that prohibits Spanish on the bus.
The ACLU’s letter is online in
both English and Spanish at:
www.aclu.org/immigrants/discrim/33863res20080131.html
and www.aclu.org/espanol/33867res20080131.html
More
information on the work of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project is available at:
www.aclu.org/immigrants