Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974

The Legislation

The EEOA was enacted August 21, 1974, to codify the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lau v. Nichols. Lau held that English-only instruction for ELLs deprived such students of meaningful instruction and constituted unlawful national origin discrimination. The EEOA codified this holding by providing that

no state shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin by … the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.

The Legal Challenges

The EEOA has been the legal tool of choice for challenging the failure of school districts to provide adequate bilingual education. The EEOA does not require a showing of discriminatory intent but only a showing that the educational program excludes ELLs. Private individuals can bring suit under the EEOA because it includes a private right of action. Yet neither the EEOA nor Lau specifically mandates bilingual education or any other specific educational program. This has led to ongoing litigation regarding what programs and resources U.S. public schools must provide to constitute “appropriate action to overcome language barriers.”

In Castenada v. Pickard, a seminal case interpreting the EEOA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that Congress's use of the term appropriate action rather than bilingual education indicates that Congress wanted to give state and local authorities wide latitude in selecting the educational programs and techniques they would use. To determine whether or not the selections would constitute “appropriate action to overcome language barriers,” the court developed a three-pronged test. Courts are to examine “the soundness of the educational theory or principles upon which the challenged program is based” and determine “whether the programs and practices actually used by a school system are reasonably calculated to implement effectively the educational theory adopted by the school.” If the school's program fails “to produce results indicating that the language barriers confronting students are actually being overcome” after a sufficient time period for a legitimate trial, then “that program may, at that point, no longer constitute appropriate action as far as that school is concerned.” This test has been widely followed and cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the late 1990s, a class action lawsuit was filed alleging that the Nogales Unified School District in Arizona failed to supply financial and other resources necessary to provide adequate ELL instruction. The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed this claim in Horne v. Flores and concluded that the lower courts reviewing this case incorrectly focused on the funding of ELL instruction. The Court noted that increased funding for bilingual education is not the only way to take “appropriate action to overcome language barriers.” Reducing class size, improving student/teacher ratios, improving teacher [Page 804]quality, utilizing uniform curriculum planning, and providing adequate instructional materials are all efforts that could be used to overcome language barriers. The Court concluded that these efforts, along with funding, had to be evaluated to determine whether or not Nogales was providing “appropriate action to overcome language barriers.” The Court sent the case back to the lower court for these factors to be taken into consideration.

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