U.S. Supports Nurse in English-Only Suit : Civil rights: The federal equal opportunity agency seeks to join Filipina’s claim that a Pomona hospital bars speaking other languages at work.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Monday it is seeking to join the civil rights lawsuit of a Filipina nurse who has accused a Pomona hospital of requiring nurses to speak only English at work.

After a preliminary investigation, the commission filed a motion Monday to intervene in the suit filed last July by Adelaida (Aida) Dimaranan, a nurse for 12 years at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.

“We are trying to send the message that English-only rules are very important to the commission, especially when they tread upon the rights of employees,” said EEOC attorney Robert T. Olmos, who filed the motion in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Such rules “create an atmosphere of inferiority, isolation and intimidation based on national origin.”

Dimaranan contends that the hospital has an informal English-only policy that prevents Filipina nurses in the maternity and child services ward from speaking their native Tagalog while on breaks, in the cafeteria or on the telephone.

Hospital officials, however, say they have no such policy and point to a letter the hospital president, Robert W. Burwell, sent to employees saying they could speak other languages on the job if doing so did not disrupt patient care.

Laura Elek, a hospital spokeswoman, said she was “puzzled” by the EEOC’s action.

“We have said all along that people can speak whatever language they’re comfortable with,” Elek said. “We have continually expressed that we view the multilingual skills as an asset.”

The nonprofit, 399-bed hospital serves an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Latinos, blacks and Anglos in north Pomona. About 100 of its 2,100 employees are Filipino, Elek said. According to Dimaranan, about half of the 14 maternity nurses working the evening shift are Filipina.

Dimaranan’s attorneys argue that the president’s letter was vaguely worded and has not prevented supervisors from exercising subtle discrimination so nurses will be reluctant to speak anything but English.

The letter, dated March 24, 1989, does not specify the conditions under which employees may speak languages other than English, and makes no mention of how the policy is enforced.

“As long as it’s not written down, sometimes they’ll enforce it, sometimes it’s not enforced,” said Kathryn K. Imahara, an attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, is representing Dimaranan.

In the lawsuit, Dimaranan, 46, of Rowland Heights, claims that two supervisors in the maternity unit told her and other nurses that the speaking of Tagalog was forbidden “at any time or any place.” The supervisors did not explain why the policy was necessary or tell them what disciplinary actions would be taken if Tagalog was used in the workplace, she says.

Dimaranan said the warning came in 1988 after another nurse overheard her talking to her mother in Tagalog over the telephone, and reported Dimaranan to the head nurse.

In a complaint filed with the EEOC last September, Dimaranan accused the hospital of demoting her in retaliation for filing the lawsuit. She was transferred from assistant head nurse of the maternity unit to a staff position in the emergency ward.

Elek said Dimaranan was reassigned “because her technical skills would be better utilized. This is actually a case of one employee’s performance, not discrimination or retaliation.”

If the EEOC’s motion to join the lawsuit is granted in federal court, the commission would be allowed to conduct depositions and to present witnesses during the trial.

Federal labor codes allow employers to establish English-only language policies when they can show that the rule is justified in the normal course of doing business. The employer must inform workers of the circumstances under which they must use only English, and the consequences of violating the policy.