Plan calls for Pa. courts to provide interpreters for people not fluent in English
About 10 percent of Pennsylvania's 12 million residents speak a language other than English at home and need to be accommodated in court when "their rights and interests are at stake," the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC), an arm of the state Supreme Court, said Tuesday.
To that end, the agency is instituting a comprehensive Language Access Plan that will make free interpretation services standard across Pennsylvania's 60 judicial districts, to be in effect everywhere within two years.
The plan calls for interpretation services to be offered, even if not requested, when the need is apparent or a person's ability to understand and communicate in English is unclear. Anyone with limited proficiency in English, or who is deaf or hard of hearing, should never be expected to use informal interpreters, such as family members, nor should the courts allow them to be used, according to the AOPC .
"Without these services," the AOPC wrote, these individuals "are effectively denied the protection of our laws."
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania praised the plan, but cautioned that it must be universally implemented in order to satisfy federal antidiscrimination law.
In February 2013, the ACLU filed a complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with the U.S. Department of Justice saying that a Bucks County magisterial district judge had failed to provide any translated court documents or in-court interpreters to two men of limited English proficiency who had tried to sue their employer for allegedly refusing to pay them. Efforts to compel the Bucks County judge, the county's judicial administration, or the AOPC to ensure legally required language access were rejected.
According to the ACLU, the AOPC sent a letter indicating it would not force courts to provide interpreters in non-family-law civil matters. The complaint to the DOJ followed and alleged that failure to provide mandated language access was a problem in courts across the commonwealth.