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ACLU Asks Esmeralda County To Stop English-Only Rule On School Bus
Thursday, January 31, 2008 : LAS VEGAS – Forbidding Esmeralda County public high school students from speaking Spanish while riding the school bus violates their free speech rights and discriminates against children of Latino backgrounds, charged the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Nevada in a letter sent today to Esmeralda County School District Superintendent Robert Aumaugher.
The ACLU requests that the school district rescind the ban on Spanish immediately.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,’” said Jennifer Chang, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Not allowing these kids to speak their native language on the bus not only violates their most basic free speech rights, but it isolates and discriminates against them in a way that I thought Rosa Parks put an end to decades ago.”
The Esmeralda School District’s policy that prohibits speaking Spanish on the bus was approved by the Esmeralda County School Board in October 2007. It affects about a dozen high school students from a small farming and ranching community in Esmeralda who are bused by the Esmeralda County school district several miles – over an hour each way – to Tonopah High School in neighboring Nye CountyRead More
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,’” said Jennifer Chang, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Not allowing these kids to speak their native language on the bus not only violates their most basic free speech rights, but it isolates and discriminates against them in a way that I thought Rosa Parks put an end to decades ago.”
The Esmeralda School District’s policy that prohibits speaking Spanish on the bus was approved by the Esmeralda County School Board in October 2007. It affects about a dozen high school students from a small farming and ranching community in Esmeralda who are bused by the Esmeralda County school district several miles – over an hour each way – to Tonopah High School in neighboring Nye CountyRead More
For more information:
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/33868pr...
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