2013 language dispute costs taxpayers $50,000

The state will pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation for failing to offer the driver’s license test in Chuukese and Marshallese.

Faith Action for Community Equity, or FACE, and two unnamed Maui residents sued DOT in September 2013, claiming the department discriminated against individuals with limited English skills in a state where more than 25 percent of the population speaks another language at home.

The lawsuit is one of six new claims that have been added to House Bill 2279, which appropriates money for claims against the state or its employees.

In 2001 FACE succeeded in its effort to put translations for eight languages in the driver’s license test, according to the class-action lawsuit by the organization, a faith-based, grass-roots, nonprofit founded in 1998 that seeks to remedy problems faced by recent immigrants to Hawaii. The languages were Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Samoan, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Laotian and Tongan.

The suit alleges that failing to provide translations of the written driver’s exam is an intentional discrimination against people of the nationalities that speak languages other than English.

According to the lawsuit, a Chuukese man and a Marshallese woman failed the driver’s examination multiple times because of their difficulty with English. Both had been frequently driving without a license to get to and from work, the lawsuit said.

In April 2013, before filing the suit, FACE submitted a petition with more than 300 signatures to a local driving licensing office requesting translations. FACE members also met with transportation officials a month later to discuss the issue.

The department was in the process of translating the exam into Chuukese and Marshallese at the time the suit was filed but did not release the translated exams until March 2014. The driver’s license examination is now offered in 12 languages other than English, including Hawaiian and Ilocano.