Alabama exam raises legal questions

WASHINGTON - Alabama authorities agree that a landmark federal anti-discrimination law is supposed to protect people like Martha Sandoval, but a lawyer for the state argued yesterday that even so, Sandoval was out of luck.

Sandoval had no right to sue over Alabama's policy of offering driver's exams only in English, because the 1964 Civil Rights Act does not specifically say that private individuals can sue states in such situations, lawyer Jeffrey Sutton said.

"States are not run-of-the-mill defendants," Sutton argued before the Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Sandoval and the Clinton administration countered that Sandoval's right to sue is implicit, and that denying her that right would fly in the face of 35 years of case law.

Sandoval, originally from Mexico, understood a little English - enough to know what signs like "stop" or "right turn" meant, but not enough to read a book, or a driver's license exam.

Sandoval wanted to take Alabama's driver's exam in 1996, but gave up when she learned that the state, following up a 1990 "English only" law, had stopped offering the test in Spanish.

The Supreme Court agreed to settle whether private individuals such as Sandoval could sue under the part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars state recipients of federal money from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.

Sandoval won a federal class-action suit scrapping the English language rule for driver's exams, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

The lower courts said the policy violated the federal anti-bias law because it would have a "disparate impact" on non-English speakers, and ordered the state to offer the tests in other languages.

Both lower courts rejected state officials' arguments that the relevant portion of the 1964 law does not allow lawsuits by private citizens.