Accent discrimination

• SIGNIFICANCE: Under US law, employers may not discriminate against applicants based on national origin or other protected characteristics. However, English fluency tests are permitted as a hiring determinant if English is essential for the job.

A standard American English accent is commonly heard in schools and spoken on radio and television, but there are regional variations, especially in Hawaii, New England, and the southern states. Immigrants who learn English tend to speak the new language in accordance with the pronunciation and intonation patterns of their native tongues, which means that those unfamiliar with their accents may not understand them completely and may require repetition or clarification. At issue, therefore, is whether an employer can reject someone with an unfamiliar accent without discriminating against that person on the basis of ethnic group membership.

The Nature of Accents

Vocal muscles develop so early in life that it is difficult for an adult native speaker of one language to learn a second language without carrying forward the accents of the primary language. In the United States, composed as it is of immigrants and their descendants, English is spoken with many accents. Some schools can teach adult immigrants to speak without a noticeable accent, but these classes are expensive and not always accessible to newcomers, whose time is often preoccupied with material adjustments to life in a new country.

The United States does not have an official standard of speech, although the informal standard is the American English accent spoken by newscasters at the national level. Accent is the result of speech patterns that differ from region to region or country to country. For example, Cuban speakers of Spanish speak more quickly than do Mexican speakers of Spanish. Variations also exist within countries. Because one characteristic of an ethnic group in the United States is the manner in which its members pronounce English, ethnic group membership is often identified by or associated with accent. This connection makes accents a key issue in racial and ethnic relations.

Antidiscrimination Legislation

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress banned discrimination on the basis of a person’s color, ethnicity, or race in education, employment, government services, public accommodations, public facilities, and voting. The law regarding employment discrimination prohibits not only obvious discrimination, such as signs that say "Blacks Need Not Apply," but also the use of neutral-sounding job qualifications that systematically place minorities or women at a disadvantage unless these qualifications are vital for the performance of the job. To refuse to hire a member of a minority group on the pretext that the person’s accent is too strong, therefore, might violate the law unless the lack of a noticeable accent can be demonstrated to be necessary for the performance of the job.

Litigation on Language Discrimination

In Carino v. University of Oklahoma Board of Regents (1984), the federal appeals court ruled that Donaciano Carino, a dental laboratory supervisor, could not be terminated from his position because of his Filipino accent as his job did not involve communication with the general public.

In 1982, Manuel Fragante, a Filipino immigrant with a noticeable accent, applied for the position of applications intake clerk in the motor vehicle licensing division of the City and County of Honolulu. The hiring officer turned him down, claiming that Fragante’s accent would make communication difficult; Fragrante’s lawyer argued that his client’s accent was fully understandable and, therefore, was a mere pretext for a Japanese American supervisor to discriminate against a Filipino. In Fragante v. City and County of Honolulu (1987), the federal district court in Honolulu upheld the right of the employer to refuse to hire someone with a “heavy accent,” ruling that Fragante’s accent was not an immutable part of his Filipino ethnic group membership. The court of appeals upheld the ruling in 1989, and the Supreme Court refused to review the case in 1990.

In 1985 and 1986, James Kahakua and George Kitazaki applied for the position of weather-service broadcaster. Although they were native speakers of English, they spoke “pidgin” English, a decided accent local to Hawaii. The position involved broadcasting marine weather reports to ships at sea, and most of the vessels in the area were based in California, so the National Weather Service felt justified in refusing to hire the two men because their accents might prevent a clear transmission of information. Kahakua and Kitazaki sued the weather service for discrimination but lost.

In 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) successfully sued Delano Regional Medical Center on behalf of a group of Filipino American hospital workers who were harassed because of their accents and heritage. The EEOC secured a $975,000 settlement. This case underscored that accent discrimination may constitute national origin discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in some cases. In Iyoha v. Architect of the Capitol (2020), the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found that a Nigerian-born employee's reassignment resulted from accent discrimination.

Impact on Public Policy

In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress did not explicitly forbid discrimination based on accent. Clarity in speech is a bona fide occupational qualification for jobs involving considerable oral communication with the general public. The standards for determining whether an accent is unclear tend to be subjective, so until the early 2010s, employers often resolved this using the Test of Spoken English (TSE), a standardized test administered nationwide by the Educational Testing Service. The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK) became the primary tests used by the mid-2020s.  By that same time, multiple organizations reported that accent discrimination remained a widespread problem in the American workplace.

Bibliography

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"What Is Accent Discrimination, and How Can You Prevent It in the Workplace?" University of Redlands, 1 Nov. 2023, ocpd.redlands.edu/blog/2023/11/01/what-is-accent-discrimination-and-how-can-you-prevent-it-in-the-workplace. Accessed 5 Mar. 2025.