Gomez v. Illinois State Board of Education

The Illinois State Board of Education (the board) (defendant) established regulations requiring each local school district to identify students with limited English proficiency (LEP) and to provide a transitional bilingual education program if it identified 20 or more LEP students who shared a common primary language. However, the regulations failed to provide a standardized testing method for identifying LEP students and failed to require districts to provide transitional bilingual education for groups of fewer than 20 students who shared a primary language. As a result, Illinois districts used a variety of different tests, some of which were not effective. A class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of all Spanish-speaking students in Illinois public schools who had been or should have been assessed as LEP (the students) (plaintiffs). The lawsuit alleged that the board violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) by failing to provide local districts with adequate, objective, and uniform guidelines for identifying LEP students. Specifically, the students alleged that the lack of a uniform method for identifying LEP students resulted in a failure to identify LEP students and a failure to adequately educate several thousand LEP students in districts with groups of fewer than 20 students who shared a primary language. The district court dismissed the complaint, and the students appealed.