[kddani]

I should just cut and paste my appellate brief from last year into this thread, it was on this very topic. I was assigned to argue against the English-only rule. The fact pattern for the brief involved a Spanish speaking immigrant who worked in a job that included translation for a hospital. When she wasn't speaking to a patient, she was required to speak in English.

I don't even know where to begin....

One thing that you all might want to consider is that there's some evidence that when you speak two languages (such as in the situation in my paper) , sometimes you involuntarily switch between the two- known as "code switching". This is especially true for those who aren't incredibly fluent.

I can certainly see both sides of the argument. As a customer, I HATE going to get my nails done, and the manicurist speaks English perfectly fine, but then talks to the other stuff the whole time in whatever language. I find that rude. Actually, I would find that rude in any occasion, regardless of whether or not it was a business. If you're perfectly capable of speaking English, and are in the company of someone who doesn't speak your other language, then it's rude to speak that language in front of them because they can't understand what you're saying.