Legal Question in Business Law in California

Apply anyway. This is probably so you will be able to communicate with the other kitchen workers who may speak poor English. If you can handle they communication there should be no problem. If you cannot, a complaint to the Labor Commissioner will have substance because you will have applied for and been denied employment.

There are many jobs that require you to be bilingual. It is not illegal. It is a reality of the culinary industry in California that you cannot do the job of chef in most restaurants and commercial kitchens if you are not bilingual in english and spanish. There is not and will never be a law that says someone has to hire you when you can't do the job.

The case of Kare v. Church is relevant. Church, a white male, worked as a sales rep for Kare Distribution.There were ten sales reps, eight of whom were bilingual. Kare�s customer base had many Spanish-speaking households.

Kare decided that all new sales reps had to be bilingual. Church turned down company-sponsored Spanish lessons. He was fired and sued. He claimed the bilingual requirement amounted to national origin discrimination.

The federal court held that Kare�s bilingual requirement was a legitimate business decision based on its customer base. It was reciprocal, in that native Spanish speakers had to speak English. The requirement wasn�t used as a subterfuge to discriminate, but was just a skill requirement for sales reps. (Church v. Kare Distribution, 5th Cir., 2006)

The flip of Kare is, that if you could show that employers were using the requirement as a subterfuge to slyly implement a form of discrimination -- e.g. bilingualism really wasn't relevant to the job, and they made no attempt to help enthusiastic people comply (as Kare did, but Church refused), and they hired lots of native Spanish speakers who didn't speak English etc. -- then you would have a better chance of making a claim.

Also, Under federal job discrimination law, performance-relatedness is crucial and if you could show that it really wasn't necessary, you would have a much better chance.