A former nursing student who claimed Pima Community College violated her rights as an English speaker has reached a legal dead end in her lawsuit against the school.
The Arizona Supreme Court recently declined to revisit the case of Terri Bennett, who said she was wrongly suspended in 2013 after she complained of being distracted by classmates who spoke Spanish to each other during class.
PCC maintained that Bennett, 53, threatened and harassed Spanish-speaking students and used slurs to refer to them.
Bennett’s lawyers, John Munger and Andrew Barbour of Tucson, recently appealed to the state’s highest court after her claims against the college were unanimously rejected twice — first by a jury in 2015 and again by a trio of Arizona appeals court judges last fall.
The high court’s unwillingness to get involved leaves intact lower court rulings that require Bennett to repay the college more than $100,000 of the $300,000 or so PCC spent defending the case.
The college recently applied for a legal judgment against Bennett to collect the debt, court records show.
Bennett’s court costs were bankrolled by ProEnglish of Washington, D.C., described by civil rights organizations as an anti-immigrant hate group with ties to the white supremacist movement.
ProEnglish officials dispute that label and say their fight for English-only laws is intended to strengthen the country.
ProEnglish spokesman Phil Kent wouldn’t say if the organization planned to cover the cost of the expected $109,000 judgment against Bennett for PCC’s court costs.
He insisted in an email interview that Bennett was wronged by the college even though the courts have repeatedly determined that she wasn’t.
“She is the unfortunate victim of a politically correct and very unfair judicial system,” Kent wrote.
PCC declined comment on the outcome of the case.
Bennett’s attorneys didn’t respond to three requests for comment over a three-day period.
