On June 1, 2004, The U.S. Department of Justice filed this federal lawsuit under Section 211 of Equal Education Opportunities Act and Section 407 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against the City of New York, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The Justice Department (the U.S. Attorneys Office and Civil Rights Division) filed its complaint and a settlement agreement simultaneously. The complaint alleged that there had been peer-on-peer harassment of Asian students and insufficient English Language Learner (ELL) programs to overcome language barriers. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that some students harassed Asian students based on their race and national origin and that Asian students who spoke English as a second language did not have equal access to educational opportunities because they could not understand English at the same level as their peers. Accordingly, the lawsuit sought an injunction against the City's failure to take appropriate action to help ELL students overcome language barriers that impeded their equal participation in the school's instructional programs.

The Consent Decree was formally approved on June 22, 2004 and was set to last until August 30, 2007. This Consent Decree required defendants to develop a compliance and monitoring plan. Under its terms, the City agreed to change the ELL program to ensure students were placed in the appropriate classes and to increase the quality of the program itself. The defendants were also required to create a policy to prevent student-on-student harassment. The City filed the required compliance plan on October 15, 2004.

On August 23, 2005, the District Court (Judge Carol B. Amon) agreed to a stipulated extension of the Decree's bilingual and ELL provisions for one year beyond the Consent Decree's original sunset date, till August 30, 2008.

Nothing additional appears in the docket.

Sarah Fries - 02/20/2014


compress summary