U.S. Senate Slashes Funding for English-in-the-Workplace Lawsuits

Approved measure calls for allocating money for adult English classes instead

The U.S. Senate voted 54-44 today to eliminate funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to prosecute English-in-the-Workplace lawsuits and instead use that money to increase funding for adult English classes. The amendment, offered by Sen. Lamar Alexander to the Senate Budget Resolution (S.Con.Res. 70) requests that the FY2009 Congressional Budget switch the $670,000 in appropriations from one program to the other.

“The Alexander Amendment is a win-win proposition for all Americans,” said Mauro E. Mujica, Chairman of the Board of U.S. English, Inc. “Immigrants get more access to English classes. Employers can institute fair-minded English-in-the-Workplace policies without fear of overreaching government bureaucracies. Finally, American taxpayers can see that our government is working toward the widely accepted belief that English is our common and unifying language.”

Last autumn, both the Senate and the House of Representatives approved language to prohibit funds from being used by the EEOC to initiate or participate in a lawsuit against a business because the business requires an employee to speak English while performing work.

Numerous court cases have validated the common sense notion that employers in the United States have a general right to require employees to speak English on the job, but the EEOC has attacked aspects of these rules as being pretexts for “national origin discrimination,” a legal theory that Congress has never passed into law. A November 2007 poll by Rasmussen Reports found that 77 percent of Americans believe that employers should have the right to require that employees speak English while on the job.