Lessons from Lau v. Nichols on How to Advance Language Rights

Leslie Villegas

Earlier this year the School of Educational Studies at Claremont University hosted a webinar to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court decision where panelists were invited to reflect on issues of advocacy, civil rights, policy, and practice implementation. I followed up with one of those panelists, Patricia (Trish) Morita-Mullaney, associate professor of literacy and language at Purdue University, to discuss the impact of Lau on the civil rights of linguistically diverse students and what lies ahead. The conversation largely draws on research Dr. Morita-Mullaney conducted for an upcoming book on Lau v. Nichols, Chinese-American language rights, and bilingual education. This blog draws on our conversation-with excerpted video recordings embedded throughout-to offer lessons from Lau that can be applied moving forward to further language rights for multilingual students.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Lau v. Nichols, the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court case which enshrined into law that students identified as English learners (ELs) must be provided with the necessary services to "fully participate" in their education, regardless of their home language. As a third generation Japanese-American, Trish Morita-Mullaney is keenly familiar with the issue of language shift among immigrant-origin communities that can happen when these services are not provided. Morita-Mullaney's father was incarcerated in a Japanese imprisonment (internment) camp during World War II where he attended school with Americanization lessons, sending the message that he should stop speaking Japanese. This "effort of erasure," as she described it, is specific to the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, and as a result, she does not have working proficiency in her heritage language. However, policies such as these can have a long-term impact on how other immigrant-origin people feel about themselves, their home language and their histories.

Morita-Mullaney began researching the Lau case in 2013 after she heard Edward Steinman, the plaintiff attorney in Lau, speak at the American Educational Research Association conference in San Francisco. During the conference, Steinman shared that the case really should have been Lopez v. Nichols because there were more Latinos than Cantonese-speaking Chinese in San Francisco at the time. So what was unique to the time, location, and people that coalesced to help bring forth the Lau decision, and how can we ensure more progress is made in relation to language rights in the next 50 years?

The individual identities of those pushing for change on the ground play a critical role in bringing legal protections and frameworks to fruition

As Morita-Mullaney began investigating the issue, she realized that while legal briefs and frameworks like Lau v. Nichols and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 play a significant role in the broader fabric of civil rights for students identified as ELs, these protections rely on people on the ground to give them the saliency they need to turn policy into real-life change. The American-born Chinese leaders who were driving change had attended San Francisco Unified before there was English as a Second Language/bilingual education and were thrown into "sink or swim" situations. These leaders knew what it was like to be taught by people who did not look like them and be prohibited from speaking their home language on school grounds. And it was this first-hand experience with language discrimination that led them to try to change the conditions for the next generation of students.

When it comes to Lau, many of the individuals that played an important role were from Chinese-American descent, including teachers and activists, and members of the Association for Chinese Teachers, the Bilingual Community Council, and the Chinese for Affirmative Action. At the time Lau was being litigated, these community leaders were not just working in schools for language rights, they were in community centers working on voting rights and issues of underemployment. According to Morita-Mullaney, these issues were "the trifecta" of the times and people were working together on multiple fronts to advance equity for minoritized people.

Work to advance language rights in schools must be rooted within the broader community

The intersectional activism occurring at the time worked to recognize the multilingual identities present in the community that could help arbitrate positive experiences with affirmative action, shaping more robust hiring practices, adequate housing and healthcare and voting rights These leaders brought attention to issues with how the U.S. Census was planning on collecting data and how it would negatively impact the resources that would be allocated to Chinatown. As these dots were connected in her research Trish concluded that if we hope to fully realize the civil rights for students identified as ELs in U.S. schools, we need to look beyond school buildings. According to Morita-Mullaney, looking at Lau and language rights only from the lens of schools is problematic and reducing it to that space will lead us to be asking similar questions in 50 years about why Lau has been largely unfulfilled.

Educational equity for EL-identified students must be re-conceptualized to account for contemporary challenges

After Lau, we saw how bilingual education and ELs' civil rights protections were eroded in the 80s and 90s through English-only policies in states like California, Arizona, and Massachusetts. Today Arizona remains the only state with this law still on the books, but we are seeing ELs' access to education being eroded through less overt strategies. EL students have been caught up in third-grade reading laws that specify children must be retained if they do not meet certain literacy benchmarks. In Indiana, for example, the governor recently signed a bill into law that included a narrow exemption for students identified as ELs which is inconsistent with research about how long it takes a student to reach English proficiency. Furthermore, the gentrification of dual language programs means that many of these programs are meeting the demands of English-majority students at the expense of those identified as ELs. These contemporary threats create cause for concern about what the next 50 years will look like for Lau implementation across the country as they require advocates to be on the defensive on multiple and more nuanced fronts.

Lau undoubtedly had an impact on the educational experiences of students identified as English learners and catalyzed many of the positive civil rights advancements we have in place today. Thanks to Lau, every school district serving these students is required to have a plan in place on how they will provide meaningful access to the district's educational program. Cases like Castañeda v. Pickard in 1981 and Plyler v. Doe in1982 added layers of protections and quality controls to the programming that is provided. And research around how to best meet the academic and linguistic needs of EL-identified students has produced countless practices rooted in evidence.

As a result, students once identified as ELs have been known to outperform their monolingual peers once they reach English proficiency. Unfortunately, access to services that get students across this finish line are inconsistent across the country and often within states as well. What is more, language acquisition and proficiency in the U.S. is often seen as a zero sum game where students identified as ELs must learn English at the expense of their home language. This means that the language and cultural identity erasure experienced by Trish and her father's generation is still being perpetuated today, just under a different guise. Understanding the context in which Lau was nestled provides a helpful roadmap for community leaders across the country working to bring real language justice change not only into the classroom for students identified as ELs, but the broader communities in which they live.

To watch the full interview,please click here.