CASE SUMMARY #9

EFC 440: Educational Law

(one-two pages)

Name : Ghionna Porreca Chapter: 17

Citation
 Case: Lau v. Nichols
 Year: 1974
 State: San Francisco, California
 Court: U.S Supreme Court

Facts
 What happened? There were thousands of Chinese-American students that were
attending public schools in San Francisco in the year of 1970, and approximately 3,00
spoke little or no English, and there were close to 1,800 who received no special services
designed to meet their linguistic needs (Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015).
Within that year the students and the parents filed suit in federal district court, claiming
that their rights to Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the
constitution and to be free of discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
were being denied by the public schools (Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015).
 State who the parties were and what brought them to court. The parties in the case were
Lau who was the plaintiff and then Nichols-president of the school board who was the
defendant.
 State those facts relevant to the issues decided by the court and the relevant background
material. Of the 1,800-plus Chinese students who weren’t fluent in English, many of
those students were placed in special education classes while some were forced to being
the same grade for years (Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015). There was a
Bilingual Education Act that was passes by Congress in 1968 to address the needs of
limited English-Speaking Abilities for students and unfortunately the funding was
limited (Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015).

Issues
 What were the questions the court addressed in the case? The main issue of the whole
entire case was whether non-English speaking students were denied an equal
educational opportunity when taught in a language they could not understand (Watson,
2004).
 The question(s) the court used to decide or resolve the disagreement between the
parties. There was another question asked such as does a school system violate equal
protection by not providing supplemental English instruction to non-English speaking
students? The last question asked was does a school district violate the Fourteenth
Amendment or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it teaches exclusively in English and
fails to provide non-English speaking students with any supplemental English language
classes?
 There may be more than one issue decided by the court. The court did not specify what
schools should do for these students, the remedies are usually left to educators under
the supervision of district court judges who are more aware of local conditions
(Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015).
Decision
 What did the court decide? The court ruled in the favor of the students and their parents,
basing its decision on the Title VI and deliberately nit ruling on constitutional grounds
(Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer, 2015). The Supreme Court held that students
who understood little or no English were denied equal opportunities when English was
the sole medium of instruction and when there were no systematic efforts to teach that
language to non-English speaking students (Schimmel, Stellman, Conlon, & Fischer,
2015).
 How did the court decide the issue(s)? After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed
this ruling, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme court (Watson, 2004). Under the
state-imposed standards there could be no equal treatment mainly by providing with
the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum for students who do not
understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education (Watson,
2004).
 What was / were the rule(s) or test(s) noted in the decision? The district court
considered Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment together and concluded that the
non-English-speaking children did not have any of their rights violated when “the same
education was made available on the same terms and conditions to the other tens of
thousands of students in the San Francisco Unified School District” (Watson, 2004).

Reasoning
 Why did the court decide the way it did? The court determined that the school systems
failure to provide supplemental English language instruction to students of Chinese who
spoke no English constituted a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil
Rights Act because it ultimately deprived those students of an opportunity to participate
in the public education program (Watson, 2004).
 What explanation did the court use to support its decision? The judges and court said
that this decision as stated affirmative remedial efforts, suggested that the constitutional
rights were appropriate in this case as long the efforts were “reasonably related to the
purposes of the enabling legislation” (Watson, 2004).
 How did the court apply the rule/test to the case? The supreme court required
transitional bilingual education for children who could not benefit from instruction in
English (Watson, 2004). Congress put in the Bilingual Education Act and as a recent one
the English Language Acquisition Act (Watson, 2004). The new law emphasizes on the
rapid English acquisition, and provides grants to the states, and allows them to choose
the programs and methods that can be used to teach English Language to students with
limited exposure (Watson, 2004).

Educational Implications
 How does the decision affect teachers / students / parents / administrators / school
climate / classroom environment? This decision affects the population of the students
who really have a hard time learning the English language. This new ruling will give the
students different rights to the students to help get them the support they need. As it
goes for the parents, I think this decision affected them as much as it did the parents
because their children were going through an educational crisis and there wasn’t
anything, they could really do about it unfortunately until they brought it to the legal
system. Administrators were affected by having students and parents angry at them and
trying to create the change of unacceptable behavior by not allowing students to get the
support they need. As it goes for the school climate, I feel like it was hostile for a long
time because the students weren’t understanding what was exactly going on because
 they couldn’t speak English. The scores and grades of the students had to of been
decreasing, and the exchange in communication had to of been very tough.

References:

Schimmel, D., Stellman, L. R., Conlon, C. K., & Fischer, L. (2015). Teachers and the Law (9th ed.).

Place of publication not identified: PEARSON.

Watson, T. S. (2004). Lau v. Nichols. Encyclopedia of School Psychology.

You must use proper APA citations with a reference list for any material that you utilize from
any source: textbook, website, journal, etc. All direct quotes must be properly cited.
Please refer to the syllabus regarding plagiarizing.
This is a helpful website:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/