Posted on 04/23/2006 10:20:18 PM PDT by SmithL
NASHVILLE - A bill that would force people to take the Tennessee state driver's license exam in English would make the state vulnerable to a lawsuit if it becomes law, some groups said.
"It comes down to discrimination," said Janice Snow Rodriguez, executive director of the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute. "People who are in every other way within their right to get a driver's license are prevented from doing so."
But sponsors of the bill are adamant that their primary concern is road safety.
"Citizens of Tennessee need to have people who can read road signs," said Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, who is sponsoring the bill with Rep. Tommy Dubois, R-Columbia.
Ketron also has said part of his reason for supporting the bill is to prevent undocumented immigrants from fraudulently getting certificates for driving or licenses.
The Department of Safety stopped issuing driving certificates to illegal immigrants last month, after federal investigators found rings shuttling in immigrants from other states to get them. Some of the rings, in fact, targeted East Tennessee.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol does not keep data on the numbers of non-English speakers involved in highway traffic accidents.
Rodriguez said the absence of statistics could make the state vulnerable to a lawsuit based upon Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
He cites guidelines from a 2001 U.S. Department of Transportation notice which states in part that "assertions of safety justifications" of the kind made in support of the English-only drivers' test bill "would generally not be accepted unless accompanied by statistical and/or scientific causality studies showing a positive correlation between limited English proficiency and crash/injury rates substantially higher than would be expected due to chance."
In other words, if confronted with a lawsuit, the state would have to prove with numbers that drivers who do not speak English get in more accidents.
Alabama was hit with a lawsuit after it passed an English-only law in 1990. In that suit, Martha Sandoval, a legal Mexican immigrant, claimed that her civil rights were being violated. She won in a lower federal court.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Sandoval, arguing that private individuals did not have a right to sue unless they had been intentionally discriminated against.
Despite winning in the Supreme Court, Alabama continues to give its driver's license exam in a dozen languages.
Ketron said he believes that the 2001 Supreme Court ruling will protect the state from a federal lawsuit in the event that his bill becomes law.
But his opponents argue that in the Sandoval case the court ruled on a legal technicality that does not insulate the state from a lawsuit.
"On the merits, this bill violates Title VI," said Stephen Fotopulos, policy director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
"People who are in every other way within their right to get a driver's license are prevented from doing so."
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Funny, I always thought driving was a privilege, not a constitutional right.
How many Mark-80 nukes would it take to convert Mexico into a giant sheet of glass?
So, every piece of government information has to be provided in 1,500 different languages? Screw it; get rid of government.
It's racist to be able to read and write English?
Do they want every traffic sign to be posted in 20 languages to go along with the variety of languages in which the tests have been given? There are hundreds of languages spoken in the U.S. How about 300 versions of each sign at every street corner? That would be fair to everyone, wouldn't it?
Hit teams to take out the top 20 or so elitists that run the country would do the trick. The rest of the ruling class would flee for their lives.
OK, this re-enforces my argument that state RINOs are going to cause reverse coattails this fall at the fed level and in '08 anointing Her Cankleness.
If this is what the 'R' is going to do, hello dems.
Only if you are a tax paying American citizen is it a privilege-it's a right for all others! Where have you been?
Not that it really matters here. One obeys traffic laws here at their peril.
Sorry, but it's been done. In the Sandoval case, the US Supreme Court ruled that citizens could not to sue to force an interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (which permits effects-testing of possibly discriminatory policy), that Alabama's official-English policy of no foreign-language drivers tests was not covered by Title VI (which bans intentional discrimination), and the majority opinion even suggested that language could not serve as a proxy for national-origins discrimination outside of the very narrow interest of childhood education.
>> He cites guidelines from a 2001 U.S. Department of Transportation notice which states in part that "assertions of safety justifications" of the kind made in support of the English-only drivers' test bill "would generally not be accepted unless accompanied by statistical and/or scientific causality studies showing a positive correlation between limited English proficiency and crash/injury rates substantially higher than would be expected due to chance." <<
The Department of Transportation has no power to enact legislation, and its guidelines were merely guidelines: they suggest that the government MAY decide an official-English policy is using language as a proxy for national origins (even though during the Civil Rights debate, a young Sen. Kennedy insisted that "national origins" means where you were born, not language you speak, so Bush is full of sh!t with his opinions... to the left of Kennedy AGAIN!)
If DOT WANTS to sue, it's the DOT's prerogative. They will not because they know they would lose in a heartbeat, and have their de-facto law overturned by the courts AGAIN. And no citizens' groups can compel them to sue.
>> But his opponents argue that in the Sandoval case the court ruled on a legal technicality that does not insulate the state from a lawsuit.
"On the merits, this bill violates Title VI," said Stephen Fotopulos, policy director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. <<
Some technicality! The court found that people cannot sue under Title VI!!!
Obviously, none of you dingbats have ever lived in a foreign country. Should our soldiers (and dependents) in Germany and Korea etc. have to spend a couple of years learning the language before they are allowed to drive there?
Here's a stop sign in Nunuvut Canada (Inukitut & English):
How can the Bulgarians and Chinese possibly figure out they should stop?
It's racist to be able to read and write English?
Of course. Spainish only tests, however, would be just fine.
"It comes down to discrimination," said Janice Snow Rodriguez, executive director of the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute. "People who are in every other way within their right to get a driver's license are prevented from doing so."
It's not about discrimination, it's about what's right. How is someone supposed to read road signs properly if they can't speak English. How would they talk to a police officer if they were pulled over? What if they were to get a ticket?
It's a simple concept, to be able to drive properly, you NEED to be able to speak English. I don't care if they speak Spanish as a first language, as long as they can speak English, too.
But of course, when someone tries to make a sensible and necessary law, liberals have to use their secret (and pretty much only) weapon: crying "racism!" It's the democRATic equivalent of "la la la...I'm not listening!" Just because we don't make unfair laws in minorities' favor, doesn't mean we're racist, it just means that we believe in EQUALITY.
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