Director Rachel Rossi Delivers Keynote Address at ABA Conference on Language, Justice and Technology

Good afternoon. Thank you, Dean Verona, for that kind introduction and thank you to the ABA, in specific to Jason Vail, and the Seattle School of Law, Dean Verona and Gillian Durron, for bringing together such a distinguished group. I only wish that I could have joined this event in person. But it is an honor to be here virtually, in the company of representatives from our country’s courts, academic institutions, legal aid service organizations, interpreters, translators, captioners and community stakeholders.  

I want to begin by applauding the ABA for convening this conference focused on the issue of language justice and technology, and for the commitment to language access that your presence here demonstrates. I also want to uplift the ABA’s work to update the standards for language access in courts. Through this effort, you are demonstrating the importance of consistent updating of language access best practices, which is ongoing work that needs to be regularly revisited.

Growing up with parents who immigrated to this country at a young age, language justice is core to my own experience and values. My mother was born in Greece, and her first language was Greek, and my father born in the Dominican Republic, and his first language was Spanish. Their experiences as immigrants were comparable in some ways, and in others they were worlds apart.

But for both of them, from the moment they arrived, they faced the difficulty of navigating their new normal in a place where English was the dominant language. They had to navigate new systems, as well as systemic barriers in a completely new linguistic and cultural setting. Family members were categorized as having special education needs because of their lack of English proficiency. Some were perceived as less capable or less intelligent than other students, simply because of the language they spoke.

At a young age, I intuitively understood the need for language access. And not really even from a perspective of affording my parents the ability to navigate the systems in this country in an equitable way, although that was critical. I understood that dismantling language barriers could better allow my parents and family to benefit the institutions they engaged with because of the wealth of expertise, knowledge and skills they brought to the table.

As many in this room know, this story is not unique. Most recent data from the Census Bureau demonstrates that nearly 68 million, or one in five people, speak a language other than English at home. This number has nearly tripled from just over 23 million in 1980, to 67.8 million in 2019. Language justice is not a nice to have, it’s a must have. As many in this room, and we at the Justice Department serve all communities across the country, language justice is a critical component of ensuring we are fulfilling our mission.

Yet, providing language access can sometimes be complex or difficult. Translation resources can be scarce for indigenous languages or languages of lesser diffusion. The cost of language resources can be significant. Time is always at play when information must be provided to the public quicky. And intentional language access strategies, including through advances in technology, if developed strategically and equitably, can ensure that we stand in the gap.

Today, as we all grapple with expanding language justice and emerging technology, I would like to address why a people-centered approach is the critical backbone to our policies, initiatives, plans and strategies.

So, what is a people-centered approach?

It begins with the humility and recognition that our systems have failed too many communities, and a desire to better understand the systemic inequities that persist and that create unequal access.

And then it requires to prioritize the perspectives of impacted communities and incorporate their consistent feedback, collaborating to develop targeted solutions to expand access to justice.

For this reason, I am so pleased that this forum has kicked off with community voices. Listening intently to the experiences of community members navigating the justice system, learning about advocacy efforts and practices in the field that are effectively responding to those needs and wants. Indeed, when designing interventions to strengthen access to justice, respect for justice and the rule of law, this is what people-centered strategies look like. We must start by engaging with the community we serve.

This people-centered approach is core to our work in the Office for Access to Justice. As we come on the heels of celebrating our second anniversary, I am thrilled to share with all of you the growth we’ve had from a small component with a handful of dedicated public servants to a team of more than 40 highly motivated and passionate professionals.

The mission of the Office for Access to Justice is to ensure that all communities have access to the promises and protections of our legal systems. We work to break down barriers to the department’s founding principle and enduring promise: equal justice under law.

As one example of how we incorporate a people-centered focus, we’re extending the reach of our access to justice mission across government by directing and staffing the work of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, a collaboration of over 28 federal agencies co-chaired by Attorney General Garland and the White House Counsel’s Office. In our 2022 and 2023 work and reports, we focused on simplification of government forms, processes and language and expanding access to both lawyer and non-lawyer assistance. We developed a roadmap for federal agencies that starts with regular engagement with the community, to better understand the access pain points and to make targeted simplification changes in response.

We are also working to support public defense and access to counsel as a critical safeguard of access to justice. In 2023, we led a country-wide tour to mark the 60th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, during which high-level Justice Department officials joined me in visits with public defenders, impacted communities and advocates across the United States — hearing directly from those being impacted on the ground.

We also conducted a comprehensive review of access to counsel in Federal Bureau of Prisons pre-trial facilities, incorporating people-centered engagement as well, and the resulting report contains over 30 concrete recommendations that we are working with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to implement. We are also excited to continue this partnership through the launch of an innovative Civil Legal Services Pilot Project to provide civil legal help to people incarcerated in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities. We started that effort by first surveying those incarcerated in federal facilities to understand the civil legal needs most frequently experienced.

And we are pursuing economic justice. Fines and penalties imposed without regard of ability to pay can have a devastating impact on a person's life. In November, we engaged with dozens of stakeholders to publish a report, Access to Justice Spotlight: Fines & Fees, which highlights the most common and innovative approaches taking place across the country to reduce reliance on criminal and civil fines and fees.

There is so much more that our office is up to, but today, I want to focus on the critical language access efforts being led by DOJ’s Office for Access to Justice, and how our people-centered approach is critical in building this work. We’re prioritizing hearing from the communities we serve, and those who work with populations who do not speak English as their dominant language.

We, like all of you, recognize that access to justice means language justice. We believe that justice belongs to everyone, regardless of language used. People should never be excluded from the promises of our laws or from the protections of our courts because of the languages they use to communicate.

You all know that access to interpreters and translators, allowing the ability to navigate legal systems, can mean the difference between being housed and losing your home, freedom and incarceration, immigration status and deportation. The impacts ripple beyond the individuals involved to families and whole communities.

In 2021, Attorney General Garland directed a department-wide review to determine what a reestablished access to justice function at the Justice Department should look like. Many of you took part in what was an invaluable review process. And it comes as no surprise that when considering the establishment of a national office on access to justice, one of the priority areas raised was “enhancing the navigability of the justice system through technology, disability, language, and cultural access.”

In 2021, Attorney General Garland also announced the position of a DOJ-wide Language Access Coordinator. A year later, in May 2022, Attorney General Garland appointed Ana Paula Noguez Mercado as the department’s first ever Language Access Coordinator. She executes her DOJ-wide mandate from within the Office for Access to Justice.

Ana Paula chairs the Department’s Language Access Working Group, which is comprised of representatives from offices across the Justice Department. The working group promotes policies and resources to ensure that — across all Justice Department programs, services and activities — we are mitigating language barriers and ensuring a seat at the table for communities historically marginalized due to the languages that they use to communicate.

In 2023, we led efforts to modernize and update the department’s Language Access Plan for the first time in over a decade. We could not have done so without the collaboration and support of many of you. Your feedback was extremely important as we revised this plan.

The updated plan aims to enhance tools for DOJ offices to expand engagement with the communities they serve — including individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing — to better understand language resource needs.

It also acknowledges languages used by historically marginalized communities such as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and other Indigenous languages, and/or language variants, and includes guidance on increasing multilingual and accessible digital content to ensure access to webpages and other electronic information.

Under her leadership, we have also created an internal Language Access One-Stop-Shop with resources for components and have provided extensive technical assistance and training to staff to improve language access across the department. This year, we are continuing to implement the DOJ-wide plan and supporting individual components in updating their individual plans and policies.

And we are pleased to have the Language Access Coordinator serve in the ABA Language Access Standards for Language Access in Courts Advisory Committee.

Finally, our office has piloted efforts to expand access to translation resources across the Justice Department, through the leadership of our Senior Advisor for Engagement and Language Access, Emy Lopez, who partners closely with our Language Access Coordinator and Language Access Team.

To date, we’ve completed over 50 translation projects for 12 DOJ offices and 14 US Attorneys’ Offices across the country. This includes translations of know-your-rights pamphlets, victim-rights materials, press releases, online webpages, forms, outreach materials, the department’s United Against Hate initiative and so much more.

As we continue building out our language access work, we are eager to continue finding ways to serve as a partner to legal service providers, courts and other leaders seeking to expand language access across the country.

Increased linguistic diversity in the U.S. requires that our institutions make every effort to tailor their services to meet the needs of these populations. We recognize that all individuals should have communicative autonomy when navigating the legal system, allowing them to advocate for themselves and take control of their own voice.

Now is the time for our institutions and legal systems to reexamine the principles, standards and practices, and to evaluate whether they truly support justice being served fairly and equally to all. The revision of the ABA Standards for Language Access in Courts underscores the importance of continuing to prioritize access to justice.

This conference will be a wonderful opportunity to discuss the different aspects and emerging trends that are necessary when designing people-centered justice systems, interventions, and solutions.

I am confident that the end result will uplift our most marginalized communities and reinvigorate efforts to ensure justice is served for the millions of individuals who use non-dominant languages in this country.

It is also critical to emphasize how important the responsible use of technology is in the context of language access. Technology can be a critical tool to disrupt language barriers.

Yet, although technology has given us access to amazing tools, to be quicker and more effective in potentially closing the language gap, it can also have drawbacks and limitations. Machine translation and AI do not capture cultural nuances, protect against bias and show sensitivity to trauma.

We, as government institutions, and service providers, need to ensure that the tools and system don’t perpetuate dehumanizing practices, unequal access, and discrimination. There is a real opportunity for our government to collaborate with industry, civil society and impacted communities to better understand and pursue best practices that safeguard the increasing use of technology.

Through intentional action that centers the voices of impacted communities, we can work to make technology a tool to assist in closing the justice gap and guard against the exacerbation of language barriers.

For example, we can preserve human review of AI-generated content and use such content with discretion, being careful about when and how to deploy it. We can ensure that emerging technological advances work as a complement to traditional ways of bridging communication gaps, not as a substitute for language assistance services provided by real people. And if we regularly engage with the communities we serve, we can understand whether technology solutions are working, where gaps continue to arise and where new strategic solutions are needed. 

I’ll close by commenting on a familiar adage — some might say that language access “gives a voice to the voiceless.” While the sentiment of this statement is accurate, a truly people-centered approach to justice requires us to reframe this concept.

The people impacted by our criminal and civil legal systems — and in particular those with limited English proficiency — do not lack a voice. In fact, many of them have the sharpest and most poignant voices within our community. It is our duty as government and court leaders, advocates, language service providers and policymakers to ensure that we elevate and cultivate the voices of impacted people — in all arenas, not just individual cases in courtrooms.

I recall an occasion when I practiced as a public defender where a man who spoke Spanish had a misdemeanor charge for driving a taxi without a license, but it was reduced to an infraction or ticket, so he didn’t have the right to counsel. My colleagues and I wanted to jump in and assist when he stood his ground seeking to go to a court trial, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. That man stood alone at counsel table, with an interpreter by his side, and began to argue with the witness on the stand. The judge carefully instructed the man that he was only allowed to ask questions of the witness. And we all stood in awe as this man, through Spanish-language interpretation, executed one of the finest cross-examinations we’d seen, and had his case dismissed.

Together, through our commitment to language justice, we can continue the critical work to empower, lift up and amplify the critical voices of the community.

I hope you will see the Office for Access to Justice as your partner and supporter. Thank you for the opportunity to join this conversation today and for your commitment to access to justice for all.