Curbing language access in America – a step beyond English as official language

As  noted by ImmProf blogger Kevin Johnson, on March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump revoked EO 13166 language access provisions through an executive order.

For nearly 25 years, Executive Order 13166 required that every federal agency meet the needs of limited English proficient (LEP) individuals when it delivers critical services. It similarly required recipients of federal funding, such as non-profit organizations as well as state/local governments, to guarantee that LEP individuals had meaningful access to their services. EO 13166 implemented the protections against national origin discrimination in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which substantially rested on the reasoning in Lau v. Nichols. (My doctoral dissertation and first law review article as a professor was substantially about Lau v. Nichols, a case brought by Kinney Lau from SF Chinatown that led to the expansion of language rights and national origin protections in many policy arenas.)

Many of those impacted LEP individuals will be from the Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. As one of the larger and fastest-growing foreign-born groups in the US, the majority of the Asian American community are immigrants. Nearly 32% of the community is limited English proficient, and language needs are diverse: the Asian American population speaks over 100 different languages.

The more widely reported aspect of the executive order is that it purports to designate English as the official language of the United States. It does so without approval from Congress. It remains to see whether this portion of the EO will be merely symbolic or will create practical barriers for LEP individuals within the AAPI community.

MHC