Lau V. Nichols: A Case Initiates Immigrants’ Equal Education and Language Access Rights

Shouyue Zhang, Indiana University Bloomington

In the late 1960s San Francisco, California, the local Board of Education and judges maintained English-only instruction for increasing public school students whose native tongues were not English. In response to Lau v. Nichols in 1974, the Supreme Court broadened the protection of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to bilingual education, firstly recognizing non-English-speaking Americans’ privilege. Equal education activists mobilized the language minority community to force the neglectful School District to conduct the Court’s decision. However, Californian voters abolished bilingual education with the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998, and the Supreme Court abrogated Lau in Alexander v. Sandoval in 2001. Twisting and turns of bilingual education’s lawsuits, implementation, and abolishment revealed neglect of language minorities’ rights and nativists’ ingrained belief of American linguistic and racial homogeneity. This thesis revisits Lau v. Nichols through the lens of language minorities’ rights and political activism. Lau legitimized bilingual education and bilingual ballots, establishing a “language access right” for non-English-speaking Americans. Therefore, Lau is best described as the “Brown v. Board of Education for language minority students.” This case demonstrates how the Asian American Movement promoted their political participation and social welfare.

See paper

 Presented in Session 194. Fighting for the Rights of Citizens