In San Francisco, for example, Chinese Americans fought a desegregation order that would force students out of neighborhood schools that provided bilingual English-Chinese programs for newcomer Chinese ELL students. In some instances, however, desegregation efforts made it more difficult. But by ruling that states are responsible for providing "equal educational opportunities" for all students, Brown made bilingual education for ELLs more feasible. Board of Education focused on the segregation of African American students. The judge in Alvarez noted that segregation was not beneficial for the students' English language development (Trujillo, 2008), and the success of the Méndez case helped set the stage for Brown.
This argument did not hold, however, for two similar cases in California: Alvarez v.
The court sided with the school district that argued the segregation was necessary to teach the students English. Salvatierra (1930), Mexican American parents in the small border town of Rio, Texas, brought suit against the school district over segregation. Westminster School DistrictĪ few lesser known lower-level cases concerning the segregation of Hispanic student predate Brown. Ferguson 58 years later in 1954 in Brown v. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed Plessy v. Although the decision was related to the segregation of African American students, in many parts of the country Native American, Asian, and Hispanic students were also routinely segregated. Ferguson that "separate but equal" public facilities, including school systems, are constitutional. Supreme Court issued its now infamous decision in Plessy v. This amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, declares in part: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Many of the cases discussed in this section are based on the due process and the equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. In this section we briefly review some of these cases and related legislation.įirst, however, we must consider the 14th Amendment to the U.S. The court decisions that grew out of these lawsuits have led to legislative changes that have helped to shape the policy climate of today. Historical reluctance by many states throughout the country to provide equitable educational opportunities to ELL and other minority students and controversies over the use of languages other than English in public schools have sparked a large number of lawsuits that address these issues.
Important Court Decisions and Legislation
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