The Human Right to Language: Communication Access for Deaf Children

6: The Importance of the First Amendment: Protecting the Extremes of Speech

6 ! THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT: PROTECTING THE EXTREMES OF SPEECH Language is a skin; I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. —Roland Barthes, “Talking” Brian was born deaf and, like Amy Rowley, had a high IQ. He attended the same school in Florida that he would have attended if he were hearing. He was the only deaf child in the program.1 Unlike Amy Rowley, Brian’s school district agreed to provide him with a sign language interpreter; there was just one problem—Brian’s interpreter could not hear very well. The interpreter wore hearing aids, and at times she had difficulty hearing everything that was being said in class by the students and the teacher. Hearing aids generally do not discriminate between sounds, amplifying all noise in the environment. When sounds come from behind a person using hearing aids or when there are other classroom or environmental sounds, the ability to hear what is being said may be compromised.2 The interpreter used Pidgin Sign English, whereas Brian used Signed English. Signed English is an artificial signing system that combines the individual signs of ASL with the grammatical structure of English. Additional signs are used to show pluralization, verb endings, prefixes, and suffixes. Pidgin Sign English also uses the signs of ASL but with a mixture of ASL and English grammar.3 Brian’s interpreter had little training, and her only other interpreting experience was with children with emotional difficulties. Brian understood about 50 percent of what the interpreter signed to him. The interpreter would not have met the requirements of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) if they were applied by the school district—though they were not, because there is no legal requirement 77 78 / A Constitutional Right to hire certified interpreters. The RID requires that interpreters “transmit everything that is said in exactly the same way it was intended,” but the qualifications, hiring, and firing of school-based interpreters is absolutely hit or miss. School resources, interpreter availability, and understanding of hearing loss all affect what is or is not provided to deaf children .4 Brian’s parents, unlike many others, had the energy, resources, and determination to fight, so they requested a due process hearing. That was both the good and the bad news. It was certainly good in that a neutral third party would render a decision, but it was bad because Brian ’s most fundamental (and First Amendment) need—the ability to express and receive information in school—was a matter to be fought over rather than a service provided without fuss or debate. Under the IDEA, communication is nothing more than an agenda item for the IEP meeting and an advocacy issue to be won or lost at an administrative hearing. Communication must be debated, justified, and struggled over year after year, but that is how it goes for deaf and hard of hearing children. The due process request for Brian was made in September 1997, but it was not until December, when school was well under way, that the due process hearing officer ruled that the school district had to provide Brian with another educational interpreter, that an interpreter with her own hearing loss simply would not do. By 1998, Brian still did not have a qualified interpreter, and Brian’s parents were forced to go to court to enforce the due process decision. Though the court upheld the hearing officer’s decision, Brian lost months and months of access to education during this process. E V E N T H O U G H B R I A N and Amy Rowley had no clear right to classroom information, the First Amendment ensures our right to express and receive callous, hurtful, shameful, libelous, licentious , and even dangerous information, or as Woodrow Wilson said, to “advertise” one’s foolishness. It protects that which is low in content or high in profanity. It protects the right to sell diet soda and wear a swastika. And it is in the less appealing sides of our characters that we see how far the First Amendment can and must go to protect the free flow of information in American society First Amendment and Protecting the Extremes of Speech / 79 and, by contrast, how little it applies to protect any kind of...