Watch Your Language! The Kansas Law Review Survey of Official-English and English-Only Laws and Policies

Abstract

In recent years, immigration has become an increasingly controversial political issue and the “Official-English” movement has gathered steam. Many state and local governments have enacted Official-English laws or constitutional amendments, employers have promulgated English-only workplace policies, and the treatment of nonnative English speakers in the schools, the courts, and other aspects of public life has come under increasing public scrutiny. Such initiatives have led to an increasing number of legal challenges and an increasing number of judicial decisions addressing the implications of OfficialEnglish and English-only laws and policies. The student authors of this survey article therefore perform an important and useful service by reporting and describing Official-English and English-only laws and policies of various kinds, and gathering, organizing, and analyzing decisions that address these laws and policies in a variety of settings and under a variety of legal theories. We may think of these developments as recent phenomena fueled by modern conditions, but language issues are as old as the United States itself. Even before the Revolutionary War, for example, Benjamin