Woman upset by Spanish in Pima class loses suit

A former Pima Community College student who said she was wrongly suspended for complaining when students spoke Spanish in class has lost her lawsuit against the school.

After two years and a two-week trial, a jury took less than three hours last week to reject Terri Bennett’s claim that PCC failed to protect her rights as an English-speaker.

The jury sided with PCC officials who said Bennett was suspended not because she complained but because she threatened and antagonized Spanish-speaking students.

The verdict in the college’s favor came down Monday, Aug. 24 in Pima County Superior Court.

Bennett, 52, a former nursing student, filed suit against PCC in 2013 with backing from ProEnglish, a Washington, D.C.-based group said to have ties to the white supremacist movement.

Bennett attended PCC’s Desert Vista campus in a part of the city with many native Spanish speakers. She claimed she couldn’t study properly because fellow students chatted incessantly in Spanish and translated aloud for each other during class.

Evidence at the trial showed Bennett was hostile to Spanish-speakers, according to a synopsis of the case posted on the website jdsupra.com and confirmed by one of PCC’s attorneys.

Bennett “confronted a student stating: ‘This is America. You’re not in Mexico. Speak English.’ She also referred to the Spanish language as ‘gibberish,’ ” the synopsis said.

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Bennett “became increasingly antagonistic, referring to Hispanic students as ‘spics, beaners and illegals.’ She also threatened a Hispanic student stating that she had a black belt and could ‘kick her (expletive),’ ” and intimidated two college employees, it said.

The jury found Bennett’s right to use English in class was not infringed upon. There was no evidence that anyone spoke Spanish to her, and all teaching, exams and materials were in English, the synopsis said.

PCC spokeswoman Libby Howell said college officials “are pleased that this outcome confirms that (Bennett) was treated fairly and appropriately.”

Bennett’s attorney, John Munger of Tucson, couldn’t be reached for comment.

ProEnglish spokesman Phil Kent called the jury decision “an especially sad day for those of us who believe that English is the special tie that should bind us all as Americans.”

“We believe that Arizona’s official English law is being undermined and that Terri Bennett has not received justice,” Kent said, adding his group will “assess what the next legal steps should be.”

Some ProEnglish board members are linked to organizations that promote racial hatred, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a national watchdog group based in Alabama that battles racism and other discrimination.

Kent, for example, also is the executive director of the Virginia-based American Immigration Control Foundation, which is listed as an “active U.S. hate group” on the law center’s website. Kent disputes that the organization is a hate group.