Achievements
U.S. Supreme Court Lets Stand Order for New Trial in Language Rights Case
Plaintiffs in the Rivera litigation (left to right): Bao Nhia Moua, Mao Her, Bee Lee, and Sy Vang.
On Monday, January 10, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously let stand an appeals court decision in Rivera v. Nibco, a widely-watched civil rights case brought by LAS–ELC on behalf of 23 Latina and Southeast Asian workers who were discriminatorily fired by Nibco, Inc., an Indiana-based multinational corporation, because of their language and national origin. The appeals court ordered a new trial because Nibco had removed a prospective juror from the Rivera jury because she was Latina. Read the LAS–ELC brief to the Supreme Court.
“We’re very gratified the Court saw no need to change the appeals court’s conclusion that Nibco excluded at least one prospective juror solely because of her race,” said LAS–ELC attorney Christopher Ho, lead counsel for the Rivera plaintiffs. “Now our clients will have an opportunity to put their case forward before a fairly chosen jury.”
Rivera, filed in 1999, is a challenge to Nibco’s use of a supposed “job skills” test, administered entirely in English, to lay off scores of Latina/o and Asian workers before all others at an irrigation manufacturing plant in Fresno, California. Although these immigrant workers had performed their jobs successfully for years with only limited English proficiency, Nibco’s test—which required a perfect, 100% score to pass—effectively singled out these and other workers of color for failure. After a seven-week trial in late 2008, an overwhelmingly Caucasian jury in Fresno returned a verdict in Nibco’s favor.
The Rivera plaintiffs appealed that adverse verdict to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, pointing out that Nibco had repeatedly misrepresented facts about three Latina/o prospective jurors in a successful effort to persuade the trial judge that they should not be allowed to serve on the jury. The plaintiffs also argued that Nibco used entirely different patterns of questioning jurors, depending upon whether they were Latina/o or Caucasian.
In an opinion issued on March 29, 2010, the Ninth Circuit sided with the Rivera plaintiffs. Pointing both to Nibco’s false statements to the trial judge as well as its racially-skewed questions to the jurors, the federal appeals court wrote that “[u]nder these circumstances, and taking into account the fact that Nibco used its strikes disproportionately against Hispanic jurors in a case involving claims of national origin discrimination against Hispanic workers…the district court’s conclusion that Nibco’s proffered reasons were not pretexts for discrimination was clearly erroneous.”
The Rivera plaintiffs are also represented by William J. Smith of the Smith & Bryant law offices of Fresno.
“There’s absolutely no reason why it should suddenly become necessary for us to know English to keep our jobs.”
—Martha Rivera