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May 10, 2002, 8:45 a.m. Mandatory Spanish Bush administration can fix the problem. By Jim Boulet Jr.

hould government workers be fired for failing to learn Spanish? In Florida's Miami-Dade County, the answer to that question is "yes."

Zita Wilensky began working for Miami-Dade County as a receptionist. Over the next sixteen years, she moved on to child-custody investigations and then joining the Domestic Violence Unit in 1999.

On September 4, 2001, Wilensky's supervisor sent an e-mail to her own supervisor, which stated, in part, "we discussed her [Wilensky's] necessity [sic] to speak a little Spanish." The memo adds that Wilensky's Spanish has "improved immensely because she practices every day."

A reporter for WSVN-TV learned there was more pressure on Wilensky than this e-mail suggests: "Zita was told she had to speak Spanish in the office. She was given 60 days to learn."

Wilensky agreed to take a series of eight Spanish classes. Yet just 30 days (and four classes) later, Wilensky was fired. Her boss's ostensible reason? Wilensky transferred a call from a Spanish speaker to someone more fluent. The caller was Wilensky's supervisor, who had disguised her voice.

Now, Mayor Alex Penelas, admits there are 64 languages spoken in Miami-Dade, which begs the question: How does a Spanish speaker handle a call from a person who speaks only, say, Haitian Creole? Those calls are transferred to a Creole-speaking consultant in another office.

So the language policy of the Miami-Dade Domestic Violence Unit boils down to (1) Spanish-speaking workers are free to transfer callers who speak a language they don't know to someone else who does; (2) English-speaking workers are fired for doing precisely the same thing.

Wilensky hired a lawyer to try to get her job back. Her lawyer was told, "go ahead and sue." After all, Miami-Dade County, like any other government entity, has plenty of lawyers on its payroll.

Now, one would think that lawyers everywhere would have eagerly pounced on this clear-cut case of national origin discrimination, especially given certain other facts. The Hispanic employees regularly called Wilensky "the Americana" and "the gringa," thus meeting the textbook definition of an illegal "hostile working environment."

Furthermore, litigation in the language area has led to large awards and even larger settlements. One company, now bankrupt, lost a $700,000 lawsuit over its requirement that employees speak only English on the job. A college in Texas was docked $2.44 million last year for its English-only policy. Miami-Dade's Spanish-only policy could easily be equally expensive.

Yet the various "civil rights" groups have left Wilensky to her fate. Take for example the National Origin, Immigration and Language Rights Program, a joint project of the ACLU of Northern California and the Legal Aid Society: "The Language Rights Project (LRP) is dedicated to combating discrimination against language minorities — that is, those persons whose primary language is not English." Wilensky, as an English-speaking American citizen, need not waste her time bothering this outfit.

Still Wilensky is no longer without either help or hope. My organization, English First, has offered to help Wilensky with legal expenses if she decides to sue. And we have been encouraging folks to demand Wilensky's rehiring.

However, a letter of inquiry from the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights could change some Miami-Dade officials' minds in a hurry, given that any violation of federal civil-rights laws by its Domestic Violence Unit employees could cost Miami-Dade County all of its federal funding.

And should President Bush go through with an expected visit to Miami on May 20th, a word for Zita Wilensky couldn't hurt.

— Jim Boulet Jr. is executive director of English First.