EEOC prosecutes 70 percent of such cases; in the other 30 percent,
they may or may not grant a Notice of Right to Sue. Lack of such
Notice does not prohibit the employee from proceeding; the right to
pursue such matters in the courts is sacrosanct. Thus the Notice of
Right to Sue is primarily an indication to the employee of the strength
of the case. For employees of federal government agencies, the EEOC
conducts the hearing, which is empowered by Title VII to hear
discrimination cases; if they find for the plaintiff, they can order
remedies. The federal agencies can appeal only to the EEOC.
7 Further excluded or missing are: cases which primarily concerned the
English-Only question and cases in which language-focused
discrimination played a minimal role in the Plaintiff’s arguments.
8 There are no summary statistics kept by the EEOC and no central
logging system for such cases, and even if proceedings were begun,
many cases are not summarized for publication. All statistics are based
on the court cases that took place prior to May, 1993.
9 This study was conducted in response to a series of inquiries from
Congress on the effect of the 1986 immigration laws. Not all the
GAO’s findings were clear or interpretable, especially in the matter of
specifically accent-based discrimination. The report in question
outlines a number of reasons for this having to do with sampling and
design questions.
10 A table of all cases mentioned is provided in Table 9.4. All quotes are
taken from court documents and summaries of court findings,
opinions, and complaints. Table 9.5 provides a list of all the cases
studied for this chapter but not cited expressly but included in the
statistics quoted.
11 Haole is a reference to both skin color (white) and geographic origins
(someplace other than Hawai’i). It is often used and understood in a
negative way.
12 According to Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs:
In many circumstances, as in literary forms, lectures, and radio
broadcasts, writers and speakers are distant from their addressees in
place, time, or both. They might be assumed to adhere to a weakened
version of mutual responsibility ... speakers still monitor what they
say ... It is just that they do all this without feedback from listeners.