Lau v. Nichols

Lau v. Nichols
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 10, 1973 Decided January 21, 1974
Full case name	Lau, et al. v. Nichols, et al. ( Alan Nichols- President of the school board)
Citations	414 U.S. 563 (more) 94 S. Ct. 786; 39 L. Ed. 2d 1; 1974 U.S. LEXIS 151
Prior history	Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William O. Douglas · William J. Brennan, Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell, Jr. · William Rehnquist
Case opinions
Majority	Douglas, joined by Brennan, Marshall, Powell, Rehnquist
Concurrence	Stewart, joined by Burger, Blackmun
Concurrence	White
Concurrence	Blackmun, joined by Burger
Laws applied
Civil Rights Act of 1964

Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974), was a civil rights case that was brought by Chinese American students living in San Francisco, California who had limited English proficiency. The students claimed that they were not receiving special help in school due to their inability to speak English, which they argued they were entitled to under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of its ban on educational discrimination on the basis of national origin. Finding that the lack of linguistically appropriate accommodations (e.g. educational services in English) effectively denied the Chinese students equal educational opportunities on the basis of their ethnicity, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 ruled in favor of the students, thus expanding rights of students nationwide with limited English proficiency. The Supreme Court stated that these students should be treated with equality among the schools. Among other things, Lau reflects the now-widely accepted view that a person's language is so closely intertwined with their national origin (the country someone or their ancestors came from) that language-based discrimination is effectively a proxy for national origin discrimination.

Lau remains an important decision on the fourteenth amendment, and is frequently relied upon as authority in many cases (the San Francisco Unified School District remains covered by the consent decree that was ultimately entered into in the Lau case, and civil rights groups continue to monitor SFUSD's compliance with that decree).

[Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974); Lau v. San Francisco Unified School District, U.S.D.C., N.D. Cal., No. C 70-627 CW.]

The case relied on Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and not the 14th amendment.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=414&invol=563 http://cases.laws.com/lau-v-nichols

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 414
• Bilingual education
• Bilingual Education Act
• Castañeda vs. Pickard

External links

• Full text of suit