Arizona did it again! Fresh from signing a law that reinforces a federal law giving police the right to ask a person stopped by police for an unrelated matter to produce papers proving the right to be legally in the US, followed by a law banning schools from teaching minority/ethnic studies courses advocating separatism, group superiority and subversion of this country, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed
legislation affirming that nothing in state law requires businesses to provide “trained and competent” interpreters when a customer comes in speaking a language other than English. Assistant Attorney General Michael Walker said that has probably always been the law.
If it was always the law, why the need for this law? Because of a lawsuit of course. A unilingual Spanish speaking woman in Arizona was treated by a unilingual English speaking optometrist in his Arizona office. The woman’s underage 12 year old daughter offered to be the interpreter; fearing legal, insurance and medical problems if the child misunderstood the optometrist refused, asking the mother and child to return with an English speaker over 18 or alternatively, visit some Spanish speaking optometrists. Instead, the Spanish speaker, whether legally in this country or not, understood enough of this country to file a discrimination suit against the English speaking optometrist. Refusing to settle, the optometrist finally won after the Arizona Attorney General took a year to decide no laws had been broken.
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