The Region - News from April 30, 1985

A federal judge in Los Angeles struck down an order by three Los Angeles County municipal judges that their court clerks could speak only English while on their courthouse jobs. U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois Jr. granted a preliminary injunction in a suit brought by a Municipal Court clerk-interpreter, Alva Gutierrez, against Judges John Bunnett, Porter deDubovay and Russell Schooling of the county’s Southeast Judicial District, in which much court business is conducted in Spanish because of the area’s large Latino population. Gutierrez said clerks hired as interpreters often talked among themselves in Spanish, and that the rule against this caused “mental stress and strain.”