Where 'English only' falls short

But when conversations are restricted, "there's almost an issue of dehumanization." says Karl Krahnke, a linguistics professor at Colorado State University. "They are not being viewed as humans with the same social needs as anybody else."

Some insist those complexities shouldn't keep employers from creating a language policy if they think it's good for business. "I speak four languages ... but a business has the right to establish rules for whatever reason - it could be safety, it could be social ... so other [workers] won't feel insulted," says Mauro E. Mujica, chairman of U.S. English in Washington, D.C. His organization promotes official-English policies, which exist in 27 states and apply only to government, not the private sector. But workplace policies, he says, should not extend to people's personal time.

Another case takes the debate out of the immigration context. At R.D.'s Drive-In in Page, Ariz., it wasn't a "foreign" language that the boss restricted, but a native one: Navajo.

The town borders the Navajo Nation reservation, and nearly 90 percent of the restaurant's employees are Navajo, though the owners, the Kidman family, are not.

Speaking on the Kidmans' behalf, Joe Becker of the Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver says the family asked employees to sign a language policy in the summer of 2000. Their reason: There were complaints from customers and staff about rude comments being made in Navajo.

The agreement read: "The owner of this business can speak and understand only English. While the owner is paying you as an employee, you are required to use English at all times ... [except] when the customer cannot understand English. If you feel unable to comply with this requirement, you may find another job."

Elva Josley and three others took exception to the rule. Ms. Josley had worked for the Kidmans for nearly three years and their families were close friends. But this, she says, was hurtful. She says the Kidmans never told her there had been complaints about things being said in Navajo.

"A lot of native American people were sent to boarding schools and told not to speak their own language ... and they were trying to make Christians out of these 'savages,' " she says. "I [said to the Kidmans]: 'It's not fair, because you people are the ones who came to our land and you can't tell us not to be who we are.' " Without native languages, she says, the US wouldn't have had the help of the code talkers during World War II.

The EEOC sued the diner, and Josley hopes the case will be settled soon and will send a message to employers: "Everyone's human and deserves to be respected ... and next time people will think twice before doing something like this."

ProEnglish in Arlington, Va., has raised money for the Kidmans' defense, and they dispute the EEOC's claim that the policy applied to personal time. "The EEOC has been very aggressive in trying to basically demonize the Kidmans for trying to maintain a good work environment for their employees - one that [avoided] problems with the use of very foul language and also sexual harassment in the Navajo language," says K.C. McAlpin, executive director of ProEnglish.

He also contends that English- language policies do not equate with national-origin discrimination, because people can be from various countries and speak a range of languages that may or may not be native to that country.

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