Escobedo, Deborah (1954-)

Deborah Escobedo has been involved in litigation and administrative and legislative advocacy on education equity issues, in particular those involving the rights of language minority and immigrant children. Born on March 9, 1954, in Lynwood, California, she received her JD from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1979.

Escobedo has had extensive experience in litigating statewide issues impacting California's immigrant communities and has been either lead counsel or cocounsel on legal challenges such as Valeria G. v. Wilson (1998), Angel v. Davis (2002), Pedro A. v. Dawson (1994), and Pazmiño v. California Board of Education (2003) and to statewide antibilingual and anti-immigrant initiatives Proposition 227 and Proposition 187. In Pazmiño v. California Board of Education, Escobedo was lead counsel, and it was one of the first successful cases brought under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The Valeria G. v. Wilson suit was filed on June 3, 1998, the day after voters in California approved Proposition 227, a ballot measure designed to severely limit bilingual education for 1.6 million English language learners in California. Valeria G v. Wilson was a class action suit filed on behalf of limited-English-proficient students, their parents, and several immigrant rights organizations. The suit charged that Proposition 227 denied language minority children equal access to educational opportunity. Both the U.S. District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request to block the implementation of Proposition 227. However, Escobedo eloquently and prophetically stated that “the state should be the guarantor of educational opportunity for all children in California…. The state is willing to put these children's future at risk. We are not—and they shouldn't be” (ACLU News, 1998) and that the proposition “would cause immediate and profound disruption of the education of students who can least afford such disruption” (CNN, 1998). Undaunted by defeat, Escobedo has kept fighting.

The case of Pedro A. v. Dawson was filed after the passage of Proposition 187 in California. The goal of Proposition 187 was to prevent undocumented immigrants' access to benefits and public services, including public education. Pedro A. v. Dawson was filed to halt the implementation of Proposition 187 and its exclusionary provisions. Legal challenges to Proposition 187 were filed in both state and federal courts, and the proposition was declared unconstitutional at both levels. Escobedo was a major force in the successful fight against implementation of this proposition, seen by many as overtly anti-Latino.

The case of Pazmiño v. California Board of Education is significant for several reasons. The state of California severely restricted bilingual education with the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998. However, under certain conditions, parents and school districts [Page 285]maintained bilingual education programs. With the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 came a federal grant program aimed at helping children learn to read. This program was called “Reading First.” The state of California accepted federal funds under the Reading First initiative but restricted school districts' access to Reading First monies to school districts that were teaching in English only. The Pazmiño case challenged the state of California's decision to provide Reading First money only to districts teaching in English, claiming that the policy excluded about 16,000 children in California who were still receiving some form of bilingual education. Many school districts, some of California's poorest, did not even apply for Reading First money because they still offered bilingual education and feared they did not qualify. In 2003, the San Francisco Superior Court ordered California to make funding from Reading First available to children who were learning to read in languages other than English and to children in bilingual programs, as well as all English programs.

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