The first thing to note in a legal approach to language use is that although the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, there is no right to be understood, and even protected speech that is understood can normally be ignored with impunity. The case of Carmona v. Sheffield (1971/1973) indicates how reluctant the federal courts have been to acknowledge even the existence of a judicial issue when an individual seeks to control the choice of language in an interaction with a government agency.
Serafia Carmona and Manuel Venegas, who were denied unemployment benefits by the San Jose office of the California Department of Human Resources Development, filed suit on behalf of all monolingual speakers of Spanish living in Santa Clara County. It was their contention that the administration of this state program in English denied them equal protection of the law.
District Court Judge Schnacks and, on appeal, a three-judge panel--Chambers, Choy, and Jameson--at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the United States is an English-speaking country and pointed out that an understanding of the language is a condition of naturalization (8 U.S.C. 1412(1)). But the third main argument against requiring use of "whatever language" a person or group speaks was the burden it would impose on government. "The breadth and scope ... [would be] so staggering as virtually to constitute its own refutation. "The extent to which government should accommodate speakers of languages other than English was deemed a matter for legislative bodies to consider, rather than something to which a person might be entitled. Both courts ruled that the plaintiffs had failed even to state a claim.
Since the court in this case did not even recognize the validity of the claim before it, it may be more instructive to note what issues the judges failed to consider. There is no question of the legitimacy of the government's authority to administer unemployment benefits. On the other hand, it cannot do so arbitrarily. The constitutional protections of due process and equal protection grant citizens the power to make some demands on government, even if those demands are not explicitly delineated. Although government agencies and those who seek their services participate equally in the communicative acts necessary to those services, the agencies hold all the power in the decision making process. Government often has a monopoly on the services it provides, and, furthermore, compels all tax payers to pay for them. From the government's perspective any individual decision to award benefits is of little consequence, but for individual applicants the consequences can be quite dire and would therefore seem to compel serious judicial consideration.
Once the legitimacy of the plaintiff's interest is established, the next logical step would be to examine the nature of the relief sought, its consequences, and the burdens it would place on each party. Plaintiffs wanted to mandate the use of Spanish interpreters and forms written in Spanish. The district court noted that no authority had been cited; apparently the abstract concept of due process without an applicable legal precedent was considered too vague. No criteria was proposed that would limit the government's burden either in terms of (a) the range of languages in which the government would be required to provide services or (b) the range of government agencies or services that would need to be offered on a multi-lingual basis. Perhaps the district and appeals courts were reluctant to write such limits into a decision granting the plaintiffs relief, chosing instead to point out the overwhelming burden an unlimited decision would have and ridiculing the claim on the basis of that burden.
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