COMM 317: Stories on AOE v. Arizona

Here are a couple of handy stories on the U.S. Supreme Court case we're going to look at Tuesday night, by bilingual education advocate James Crawford. He's opinionated, but his reports are accurate. And they help cut through the chaff in a case that got more and more complicated as interested parties (including some appellate court judges) kept reviving it long after it should have been thrown out of court.

Crawford has two reports, one when the case was argued before "the Supremes" (not, in this case, a singing group but a common nickname for the Supreme Court). In 1996 he said:

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, its most significant language rights case in at least 20 years. But the justices showed no interest in the constitutional issues raised by Arizona's English Only measure, which has been overruled by lower courts as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. Instead, the hour-long session focused on procedural questions of standing, mootness, jurisdiction, and other arcana.

Let's define a couple of words. "Arcana" means stuff that is arcane, or really, really specialized. Don't ever use it if you're writing for the public! But "moot" is a word we need to know. It's a legal term that means the case no longer presents an issue that has to be decided by a court. When a defendant dies, for example, charges against him (or her) are dropped. In this case, when the Arizona attorney general said he would not enforce the law, plaintiff María-Kelly Yñiguez no longer could claim the English-only law restricted her rights. A while later, she left her state job. So the case was moot for two reasons. Crawford reported:

Barnaby Zall, the attorney for AOE, had barely begun his argument in favor of Article 28 when he was interrupted by Justice Ginsburg. She wanted to know why the case was not considered moot back in 1989, when Arizona's attorney general issued his opinion. "Why didn't that end the controversy, when [plaintiff ] Yñiguez was in no danger of firing?" she asked. In other words, why wasn't the case dismissed by the district court at that point?

Crawford summed up the oral argument like this: "By their questions and comments, the justices left little doubt that they plan to throw the case out of court."

Sure enough, in March 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the case. Said Crawford:

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to decide the constitutionality of Arizona's English Only amendment – in effect, dismissing the case after eight years of litigation without ruling on its merits. Article 28 of Arizona's constitution – also known as Proposition 106, adopted by voters in 1988 – requires all levels of state and local government to "act in English and no other language." Two lower federal courts have overruled the measure as a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech for state employees and elected officials. But yesterday the Supreme Court threw out those decisions on procedural grounds.

That's typical. Courts don't like to rule on the substance of a case if the procedural issues are muddy.