According to a recent report in the Charlotte Observer, Ana Ligia Mateo, a secretary for Devonshire Elementary School in Charlotte, was fired for speaking Spanish to Spanish-speaking parents.

Mateo, who has since filed a lawsuit against the school district, claims that in 2008, Suzanne Gimenez, the new principal of Devonshire Elementary, arrived and quickly instituted a “no-Spanish rule.” Gimenez (who is not Hispanic herself but is married to a Hispanic man), notified staff members that they were not to engage with parents in Spanish. English was to be the only means of verbal communication.
After this rule was handed down, Mateo continued to speak in Spanish to parents who had difficulties with English both in person and on the phone. Mateo’s lawsuit describes an instance where a parent arrived, clearly distraught, claiming her son had been sexually assaulted while at school. Yet Gimenez prevented Mateo from translating for the parent, instead suggesting that the woman’s seven-year-old son do the translating.

On another occasion, Mateo reports that she was verbally abused after another attempt at translating for a distraught parent. Shortly thereafter, she was given an ultimatum: “follow [the] policy of no Spanish speaking or she could leave.” But when Spanish-speaking parents came to her, Mateo had difficulty refusing to communicate with them. After being fired, Mateo filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), whose investigation turned up substantial evidence to believe Mateo’s civil rights had been infringed. The EEOC hoped to resolve the conflict through “conciliation” between the two parties; failing, it referred the case to the Justice Department.

A ruling in the case is yet to be made, but we are left with the question of why this incident occurred in the first place. The whole situation is simply puzzling. I think Mateo should be immediately reinstated — and given a promotion and pay raise for her courage and insistence on acting in parents’ best interest. Principal Gimenez should be fired for enacting and enforcing a policy of discrimination. Because until a well-articulated counter argument is introduced (in any language, we here are completely open to it), actions like those undertaken by the leadership of Devonshire Elementary will never make sense.