The ELPAC Report January 2000

Federal Civil Rights Agency Sues Employers
After Twenty Years of Rejection, First Courts Uphold EEOC Anti-English Rules

For twenty years, federal courts have said that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was breaking the law it was supposed to enforce. The EEOC has tried to stop employers from requiring employees to speak English on the job; more than two dozen times, the courts have said it can't do that.

These federal court decisions were not subtle or contradictory. One recent court case, involving a claim by a Polish cleaning woman against a Philadelphia church, called the EEOC rules "wrong" and illegal.

Yet EEOC is at it again, and finally one court has agreed with it. In Chicago, lower federal court Judge Milton Shadur said that the agency can sue an Illinois employer who told workers to speak English in the workplace. Ironically, just two weeks before, another judge in the same Chicago federal court ruled exactly the opposite way.

The EEOC responded by saying that the court rulings are now "mixed," and that it intends to vigorously prosecute employers who want to keep English as the common language in their own workplaces.

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