Hogan, Timothy M. (1951-)

Timothy M. Hogan was born October 8, 1951. He received his undergraduate degree from Arizona State University and his law degree from the University of Notre Dame Law School. Before joining the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, he was chief counsel for the Arizona Corporation Commission. He also served as Arizona's assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights and Financial Fraud Divisions, and as program director of the Phoenix Program at Community Legal Services. Hogan has argued cases before the Supreme Court of Arizona and the United States District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This entry discusses Hogan's advocacy efforts, and his work in the landmark court case Flores v. State of Arizona.

The impact of Hogan's legal advocacy on the education of English language learners may not be well known to many outside of the state of Arizona. But within the state, he is widely viewed as the most effective and dedicated legal advocate for the educational rights of English language learners in public schools. As executive director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest since 1991, Hogan is one of the leading civil rights attorneys in the state. He has been a consistent and tireless legal advocate for the educational rights of linguistic minority students. At the center, Hogan's work focuses primarily on issues relating to public school finance, especially, the ongoing and contentious battle with the Arizona state legislature for equitable school funding for the education of English language learners.

Hogan was cocounsel on the landmark federal court case known as Flores v. State of Arizona, filed in 1992 and decided in 2000, in which the state was ordered to increase the amount of funding it allocated to districts serving English language learners. The court also ordered the state to implement new procedures for the reassessment of English language learner (ELL) students and to monitor school district compliance with the law more stringently.

Despite the court order, the state legislature refused to comply, even after the state was charged with contempt for failing to meet its funding obligations. In one of Hogan's numerous court appearances since the case was decided, he asked a federal judge to withhold $500 million in highway funds until the legislature fulfilled its mandate. This request was daring and politically unpopular, and Hogan was vilified by angry legislators in the press and in conservative opinion editorials. Nonetheless, the legislature's unwillingness to obey the Flores mandate for ELL funding resulted in an unprecedented court sanction against the state—fines of as much as two million dollars a day until the legislature lived up to its obligations.

The Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature addressed the accruing fines ($21 million by April 2006) by submitting four ELL funding measures: The first three were vetoed by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano as unacceptable. The fourth measure was ruled inadequate by the same judge who had imposed the fines because, among other problematic issues, the measure added only an additional $76 to the state allocation of $350 per English learner (the latter figure itself is inadequate, considering that in an earlier study to determine the cost of educating English language learners, the state arrived at a much higher figure).

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