Hispanic hairdressers will be tested in native tongue

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, July 27, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.

Dalia Sanchez, a 37-year-old beauty salon owner from El Salvador, thinks it was an act of God that brought her to meet Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, more than a year ago.

She had collected signatures on a letter addressed to the senator almost a year earlier. It outlined a problem affecting her employees and hundreds of other Hispanic hairdressers.

They were practicing professionals in their countries of origin, or had passed exams in Spanish in one of the few states such as California that offers this alternative, but were having trouble getting licensed here because they kept failing Nevada's 125-question exam written in English.

As a result, dozens of salons that cater exclusively to Hispanic customers were getting citations and fines for employing hairdressers without licenses. Many hairdressers couldn't work in their profession.

But Sanchez never sent the letter -- "I guess it just wasn't time yet," is the only explanation she offers.

She did meet Schneider months later, and the meeting resulted in a bill passed by the 2001 Legislature and signed into law by the governor. Senate Bill 153 directs the state Board of Cosmetology to offer its licensing exams in Spanish starting in January.

The bill passed the Senate in March by a 19-0 margin, and the Assembly in May in a 39-2 vote.

Although the bill was barely noticed in an otherwise controversial legislative session, it has set a precedent by ordering the first professional board in the state to open its testing to Spanish, the language of Nevada's fastest-growing minority. Hispanics are 19.7 percent of the total population, according to the 2000 Census.

By her own description a person who never went near politics, Sanchez was motivated to address the problem affecting her business because in January 2000 she received the last of what she says were more than $5,000 in fines she has paid since 1998 at her salon on Maryland Parkway.

"It was hard to get licensed employees, even though many were qualified," she said. "They were failing the test three and four times and would just give up." The exam costs $85 the first time and $40 each additional time.

Mary Manna, executive secretary of the state cosmetology board, says the issue has been with her profession for nearly two decades.

"We were using interpreters in Spanish until 1984," said Manna. "Then a board member heard reports that there was cheating on the exams where interpreters were used," she said.

"Plus, there was concern for the safety of customers -- what if Spanish-speaking cosmetologists were passing the exams, but couldn't read labels on products with dangerous chemicals written only in English?"

Manna said the seven-member board decided to consult the attorney general's office, which in January 1985 offered the opinion that, absent statutory direction, the board may refuse to offer tests in Spanish. The very next month the board decided to no longer use interpreters.

"Basically, the issue sort of died down until June 1999, when we saw demand for the test in Spanish again," Manna said.

The board again sought the opinion of the attorney general's office, which responded in November 2000. It again stated that nothing in Nevada law prohibits the board from offering its exam in English only, and that due process was not violated by maintaining testing as it was.

The office also cited similar cases in other states, and concluded that if the board were to translate its exam into Spanish, it should also translate the exam into other languages.

So things remained as they were, until SB153 came along.

"To my mind, this was a no-brainer, a matter of fairness," Schneider said.

"You have 300,000 Hispanics in Clark County, many of them first generation immigrants, and they need to have their hair cut once a month.

"Where are they going to go?"

Schneider said he responded to each of the board's concerns.

"I went to one of these salons, and the woman pulled products off the shelf. They all had labels or written material in Spanish."

"Then they (cosmetology board members) came to Carson City during the session and said that the law would be unconstitutional if passed. I brought in our legal expert from the Legislative Counsel Bureau who had drafted the bill and asked her to answer the charges. She said it had no problem. Then I asked which member of the board had a law degree."

Manna says the board's main concern all along has been public safety and fairness.

She said that she has seen more Asians taking the exam than Hispanics, and that a cursory review of last names led her to believe that the state had twice as many Asian-owned salons as Hispanic-owned salons.

"How are we going to accommodate the other ethnic groups?" she said.

The bill states an applicant seeking the exam in a language other than Spanish and English can place a request six months in advance of the test date and an interpreter will be provided at the applicant's cost.

Brenda Erdoz drafted the bill and works in the legal department of the Legislative Counsel Bureau. "We thought the Census 2000 figures on the Hispanic population justified offering the test in Spanish and not in other languages," she said.

Apart from the board, the only opposition to the bill was offered by several members of the profession who said they were concerned about such issues as the impact of providing tests in Spanish on the curriculum of vocational schools.

No one objected to the bill on the grounds that English should be the only language used in professional licensing exams in the United States.

Viviana Andrade, vice president for public policy at the Calif.-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that Nevada was on the cutting edge with this bill.

"The whole issue of offering professional licensing exams in Spanish is a new one, and we've only seen several cases in Texas and California in recent years. In the former case, a law allowing plumbers to take exams in Spanish was repealed, and in the latter, we convinced Gov. Gray Davis not to repeal a law allowing used car dealers tests in Spanish," said Andrade.

In any case, come January, not only will the profession of cosmetology be transformed in Nevada -- a legal precedent will have been set.

"When the bill was still in committee, the cosmetology board testified that this bill would affect other professional boards in the future," said Schneider.

"We paused a minute. Then I said, 'I think you're right.' This law may well carry over to other professions if the issue is challenged in the future."

At the same time, the senator said such a bill may only be necessary for the coming decades, as the second and third generations of Hispanic immigrants become bilingual.

"I remember one of the women who addressed the Legislature," Schneider said. "She had testimony written in English, but her 11-year-old daughter had to read it."