lauvnichols

**Lau v. Nichols**
(U.S., 1974)

__Facts__:
 * P (Kinney Timmon Lau) represented 1800 Chinese-American students in the San Francisco Unified School District who were receiving instruction in English, a language they did not understand.
 * D (Nichols) was the president of the San Francisco School Board and district.
 * P argued that this educational situation amounted to discrimination; taking people who are the same and treating them differently is one type of discrimination; taking people who are different and treating them the same is less obvious, but still a form of discrimination.
 * D had, after meetings with the Chinese-American community and protests, responded by providing one hour ESL classes for 1000 of the district’s 2800 Chinese-American students; the 1800 here are ones who did not receive this service.
 * P argued that this unequal treatment violated section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
 * P did not seek a specific remedy to the situation; the group merely wanted the district to “apply its expertise to the problem and rectify the situation.”

__Issues / Answers__:
 * Does not providing the students with basic English skills or bilingual instruction violate section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Yes.
 * Does not providing the students with basic English skills or bilingual instruction violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? No.

__Basis / Rationale__:
 * The failure to provide English instruction to approximately 1800 Chinese-American students “denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public education program and thus violates 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based ‘on the ground of race, color, or national origin,’ in ‘any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.’”
 * The Court also cited a federal regulation in its ruling: the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1970, 35 Fed. Reg. 11595. This regulation states: “Where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin-minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.”

__Notes__:
 * In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Blackmun included explicit dicta to clarify that the large size of this student group “being deprived of meaningful schooling” was an important factor in this decision. He wished to ward off individual students who might try to sue because they speak a language other than English and yet are receiving instruction only in the latter.
 * The decision was unanimous.
 * In overturning earlier results in the District Court, Court of Appeals, and the Ninth Circuit Court, the Supreme Court described these previous decisions as “very cruel, inaccurate, and callous.”
 * __The San Francisco schools agreed to provide bilingual education for Chinese, Filipino, and Hispanic children.__