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Court Upholds Most Of Arizona's Ethnic Studies Law

The law that banned a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson is going back on trial. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court Of Appeals upheld the Arizona education law in large part, but the court did disagree with the lower court’s decision in one area.

The appeals court on Tuesday said it agreed with most of a lower court’s decision on a Mexican-American Studies program. That statute ended the program in the Tucson Unified School District. The decision said the 2010 law is not overly broad and vague. But it did reverse part of the lower court’s decisions. The 9th Circuit ruled the ethnic studies law may have been enacted or enforced at least in part with discriminatory intent. 

Gabriel Chin is a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law.

“The issue is whether the law was motivated by discrimination and the Court of Appeals said we’re looking at all the information that’s available and the types of evidence they’re looking at are the statements, behavior, motivation of the people who were involved in passage of the law,” Chin said.

Chin said that includes how an independent report on the ethnic studies program was rejected by education leaders.

Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez was a reporter at KJZZ from 2008 to 2015.