TO: Friends

FR: Jim Boulet, Jr., Executive Director, English First (703) 321-8818; legislativeaffairs@englishfirst.org

DT: July 9, 2007

SJ: Protect the Salvation Army by supporting the Alexander amendment to CJS Appropriation

On June 28th, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed an amendment 15-14, offered by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) to the 2008 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriation (S.1745). The Alexander amendment may be found in Title V, Section 527 of the legislation:

SEC. 527. LIMITATION. (a) In General- None of the funds made available in this Act shall be used to initiate or participate in a civil action by or on the behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against an entity on the grounds that the entity requires an employee to speak English while engaged in work.

(1) Even the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed that the EEOC's opposition to "one language in the workplace" is excessive.

In 1993, a similar, but less sweeping, English-only rule enforced by a California firm was approved by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the Spun Steak case). African-American employees of a small meat-product firm had grown tired of being insulted in Spanish. In order to put a stop to the ethnic slurs, the company decided to impose an English-only rule for the day shift and a Spanish-only policy for the night shift.

(2) The Salvation Army has already won a similar lawsuit.

According to pointoflaw.com, "in a 2003 case the Salvation Army, the venerable religious institution, was upheld in its right to fire a worker who'd refused to speak English when asked to do so by her boss" [http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/003849.php].

Essential facts of the Salvation Army case.

In 2004, the Salvation Army asked Dolores Escobor of the Dominican Republic and Maria del Carmen Perdomo of El Salvador to learn English and gave them a year to comply. They did not do so and were dismissed in 2005.

Salvation Army officials could have just let these women continue merrily along in their little linguistic ghetto. Instead, they tried to encourage these women to better themselves by simply learning English.