If the English-only charter amendment passes, Metro Legal Director Sue Cain says Metro government will be sued. She believes it’s also unlikely the amendment will withstand constitutional challenges.
Cain says the amendment as written is vague. She says that means many departments may not know whether a certain service falls within the health and safety exemption, written into the charter amendment.
“And they would therefore not take the chance—not risk being in violation of the charter amendment and in that sense they are having their free speech rights chilled. And that is something that the courts will look at when they’re determining whether a provision is unconstitutionally vague.”
The charter amendment would allow the Metro Council to pass exemptions where languages other than English can be used, and the amendment can’t conflict with any federal or state laws.
If the amendment passes and the city is indeed sued, Cain says the US Supreme Court has already struck down several previous English-only laws. The earliest dates to 1923, when a Nebraska school teacher was convicted of teaching school classes in German. The Supreme Court struck down the Nebraska law that required all children to be taught in English until they were in eighth grade, saying the law deprived citizens of “liberty” thereby violating the 14th amendment.
The 1923 case, Meyer v. State of Nebraska, can be found here.
Other US Supreme Court cases relate to whether accounting records can be kept in other languages, and similar English-language statutes in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Alaska.
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