Opinion ID: 3051186
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The EEOA and the Complaint

Text: Nogales is a small city along the Mexican border in southern Arizona. In 1992, when this suit began, the population of the Nogales Unified School District (“NUSD”) was almost entirely Hispanic; that is still so. Most of its approximately 6,000 students come from homes where Spanish is the first language. These students are distributed among six elementary schools, two middle schools, one high school, and one stretched to their limits both economically and in terms of morale and personnel. They will continue to struggle to provide quality [programs for such students] without additional assistance and resources from the State.” They further note that “Arizona school districts cannot divert general education funding to . . . programs [for such students] without seriously crippling school districts’ ability to provide all other aspects of a public education.” FLORES v. HORNE 1809 alternative high school. The great majority of the district’s students are classified as English language learners (“ELL”) for at least some portion of their academic careers. In 2006, for instance, thirty percent of the students were in ELL programs and an additional sixty percent had been in such programs. Although Arizona’s theory of ELL instruction has changed over the years, the enormous importance of such programs to students and parents in Nogales has not. ELL students and parents in Nogales (we refer to them as “Flores,” after class representative Miriam Flores), were faced with serious inadequacies in ELL instruction and sued to correct them. The suit proceeded as a class action, with the class defined as “all minority ‘at risk’ and limited English proficient children now or hereafter, enrolled in Nogales Unified School District . . . , as well as their parents and guardians.” Flores’ second amended complaint, filed November 29, 1996, primarily alleged that the “State has failed to provide financial and other resources necessary for adequate implementation of mandatory [ELL] programs by public school districts in Arizona,” because “[t]he cost of [ELL] instruction complying with federally prescribed state mandates far exceeds the only financial assistance the State theoretically provides school districts for such purposes.” As a result, Flores contended, Arizona, the state Superintendent, and the state Board of Education violated the EEOA. The relevant portion of the EEOA provides: No State shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by — . . . (f) 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. 1810 FLORES v. HORNE 20 U.S.C. § 1703. This provision of the EEOA was intended to remedy the linguistic discrimination identified by Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974), in which the Supreme Court held that failing to provide for the needs of non-English speaking students “is to make a mockery of public education,” rendering classroom experiences for these children “wholly incomprehensible and in no way meaningful.” Id. at 566; see also Castaneda v. Pickard, 648 F.2d 989, 1008 (5th Cir. 1981) (noting that the EEOA codifies the “essential holding of Lau, i.e., that schools are not free to ignore the need of limited English speaking children for language assistance to enable them to participate in the instructional program of the district.”).2 Flores alleged that such needs were not being met in Arizona. She charged Arizona with “administer[ing] a school finance scheme that is just sufficient to let less distressed, predominantly Anglo districts impart State-mandated essential skills to their mainstream student bodies . . . but that does not and will not enable NUSD or similarly situated districts to impart the same State-mandated essential skills to decisively minority enrollments requiring expanded compensatory programs, smaller class sizes and further efforts of like nature in order to acquire them.” Flores’ complaint was premised on the EEOA analytic framework provided by the Fifth Circuit in Castaneda. See 648 F.2d at 1009-10; see also Gomez v. Illinois State Bd. of Educ., 811 F.2d 1030, 1041-42 (7th Cir. 1987) (applying the Castaneda analysis). The Castaneda framework is three-fold: 2 The EEOA contains an express private right of action, 20 U.S.C. § 1706, under which this suit proceeds. See Flores v. Arizona, 48 F. Supp. 2d 937, 940 (“Flores I”) (D. Ariz. 1999) (holding that the plaintiffs could proceed under § 1706). We have held that § 1706 abrogates state sovereign immunity. Los Angeles NAACP v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist., 714 F.2d 946, 950-51 (9th Cir. 1983); see also Gomez v. Illinois State Bd. of Educ., 811 F.2d 1030, 1037-38 (7th Cir. 1987) (same). Arizona does not contend otherwise. FLORES v. HORNE 1811 First, courts must be satisfied that the “school system is purs- [uing] a program informed by an educational theory recognized as sound by some experts in the field or, at least, deemed a legitimate experimental strategy.” Castaneda, 648 F.2d at 1009. Second, “the programs and practices actually used by a school system [must be] reasonably calculated to implement effectively the educational theory adopted by the school.” Id. at 1010. There must, in other words, be sufficient “practices, resources and personnel . . . to transform the theory into reality.” Id. Third, even if theory is sound and resources are adequate, the program must be borne out by practical results. Id. Flores alleged, consistent with Castaneda step two, that Arizona had “failed to provide financial and other resources necessary for adequate implementation” of its ELL programs.