Wednesday, April 29, 1998

LOS ANGELES -- The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 1988 law requiring state and local government business to be conducted in English was unconstitutional.  Arizona was one of the 23 states from Arkansas to Wyoming that had passed measures in the late 1980s and early 1990s making English the official language of the state.

Most of measures were little more than symbolic, but Arizona's was by far the most restrictive, at least on paper. It prohibited an elected official, for example, from speaking to his Navajo constituents in their native tongue while on state or local business. And it required that welfare workers or state park rangers fluent in six languages use only English to give aid or directions.But the measure, passed as an amendment to the state constitution, had never been implemented because most elected officials refused to do so and because of federal and state court battles.

In Tuesday's ruling the Arizona Supreme Court said that the law "adversely affects non-English speaking persons and impinges on their ability to seek and obtain information and services from government." The 43-page opinion went on to say that the law "chills First Amendment rights that government is not otherwise entitled to proscribe" and that it also violates the United States Constitution.

"It was racist," said Stephen Montoya, the lawyer who represented legislators and state employees seeking to overturn the law. "The only individuals in Arizona who don't speak English fluently or not all are people of color. I see this as a way to keep them out of the political process."  Arizona's English-only law is the first to be overturned in
court since the 1920s. The measure has been in court almost from the moment the voters passed it in 1988, by less than one percentage point, during a campaign hot with accusations of racism and love-it-or-leave sentiments.

"I'm disappointed," said Bob Park, one of the sponsors of the law, and a retired investigator for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "If the state doesn't appeal this ruling, I will."  But Paul Binder, a professor of constitutional law at the Arizona State University College of Law, said it was about time that "we get rid of this thing."

"The thing was passed by a tiny majority of the people in the state," Binder said. "If the campaign had gone on a little longer, it would have been defeated and we would have been spared all this." James Weinstein, who also teaches at Arizona State, said the law was bad policy and "animated in part by some xenophobia." But, Weinstein said, "I have some real questions whether this law is totally unconstitutional."

Eric Stone, a spokesman for U.S. English, a national group seeking to make English the official language of the nation, said, "We kind of expected what happened today, because Arizona's law was the strictest in the nation," adding that "this ruling is basically limited to Arizona."  Since Arizona's law was passed and almost immediately taken to court, Stone said his group had been trying to draft less restrictive laws to avoid legal challenges. For the most part they have succeeded, except in Alabama, where state officials are being sued because they now provide driving tests only in English.

Before the state adopted an English-only law in 1990, Alabama offered driving exams in 14 languages. Now people like Martha Sandoval, who is suing the state, cannot get a driver's license because she is not fluent in English, The Mobile Register in Alabama has reported.

Still, most of the laws across the country are more political than legal, said James Crawford, an expert on English-only laws and bilingual education.  "The main impact of these measures," Crawford said, "has been to create hostile climate for supporting programs that provide a transition to help immigrants into the mainstream."  But Park, the law's sponsor, said it was not the government's obligation to provide services "in 300 different languages.  "I don't believe in English-only," he said. "I believe in English as the official language of government."

Pete Rios, a democratic state senator and a plaintiff in the English-only case, represents a Phoenix district with a high percentage of Spanish-speaking residents. Rios said there was no underground movement to replace English as the official language of government.  "We in Arizona, we as Hispanics and Latinos, have always accepted  English as the official language," Rios said. "If this law was enforced, a lot of people would have been in a lot of trouble."