A federal judge has ruled that bilingual education and English-as-a-second-language programs in Texas comply with federal law, according to an article published today in The Dallas Morning News. Hispanic civil rights groups—the League of United Latin American Citizens and the GI Forum—asked U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice last year to update a court order he had issued 35 years ago that required Texas to provide a better education for English-language learners. In yesterday’s court ruling, he rejected their arguments that ELLs are receiving an inferior education in public schools, the article says.
By the way, Justice William Wayne Justice is the same U.S. district judge who ruled in the 1970s that undocumented immigrant children in Tyler, Texas, were entitled to receive a free K-12 education. Tyler Independent School District appealed the decision in the court case, Plyler v. Doe, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Judge Justice’s decision. See my earlier post, “A Scholar’s look at MALDEF’s role in Plyler v. Doe.”