WASHINGTON, D.C. (Law360) — The U.S. Department of Justice unveiled a plan Monday to make good on President Donald Trump’s executive order in March declaring English the official language of the United States and revoking prior government actions supporting Americans with limited English proficiency.
In the seven-page implementation memo, the Justice Department said it is taking the helm on a “coordinated effort” to “minimize non-essential multilingual services” and “redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation.”
Actions include rescinding prior agency guidance that aimed to increase access to federally assisted programs and activities for people who have limited English proficiency and reviewing non-English government services to phase out what it deemed “unnecessary” multilingual offerings.
The DOJ said it wants to prioritize publishing agency resources in an “English-only format,” and said “agencies should determine which of their programs, grants, and policies might serve the public at large better if operated exclusively in English.”
The Justice Department argued in the memo that its plans align with “the law as it stands today.”
However, legal experts told Law360 this blueprint may run up against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s long-standing regulation stating that workplace rules barring the use of languages other than English run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
“They are treading a fine line here with the executive order and the DOJ’s interpretation,” said Michael Fallings, a managing partner at worker-side firm Tully Rinckey PLLC. “The EEOC has determined that English-only rules do violate Title VII. The DOJ knows that, but they’re still trying to implement this order despite that.”
Regulatory Disconnect
Title VII, which applies to private and public employers, including the federal government, prohibits workplace discrimination based on someone’s national origin.
While the Justice Department backed up its policy plans by arguing that “language proficiency is not interchangeable with national origin or race,” Samuel M. Mitchell, a partner at Husch Blackwell LLP who advises employers, said the DOJ’s stance doesn’t completely square with federal regulations.
“To me, the DOJ’s interpretation is only partially accurate,” Mitchell said. “Federal agencies, and especially the EEOC, have long interpreted national origin discrimination to include certain language-based barriers.”
In a set of 1980 regulations, the EEOC said that the “primary language of an individual is often an essential national origin characteristic” and that an employer’s blanket, English-only policy “disadvantages an individual’s employment opportunities on the basis of national origin.”
There are exceptions. In a 2016 publication, the commission said “language-restrictive policies may be applied only to those specific employment situations for which they are needed to promote safe and efficient job performance or business operations.”
But the agency said in its long-standing regulations that it will “presume” any workplace rule completely barring other languages on-site “violates Title VII and will closely scrutinize it.”
Mitchell said the DOJ’s new position “overlooks this regulatory reality.”
The EEOC has also consistently enforced this view of the law, at least through 2024.
In early 2023, it reached a $276,000 settlement with an employment firm it said imposed a no-Spanish rule on its workers with no business justification. In June 2024, it cut a $15,000 deal with a housekeeping company that the commission alleged barred an employee from speaking Spanish in the workplace.
Data from the agency shows the commission also receives a steady stream of complaints about employers’ language restrictions. From 2010 to 2024, the EEOC received on average about 140 charges annually alleging English-only workplace policies cut against Title VII.
These types of filings had been steadily dropping off over the past decade and a half, but agency data shows a recent uptick.
