Attorney General Pam Bondi issued guidelines on Monday to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English as the nation’s official language, describing the guidance as “transformative” and intended to promote “a more cohesive and engaged nation.”
“As President Trump has made clear, English is the official language of the United States,” Bondi said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will lead the effort to codify the President’s Executive Order and eliminate wasteful virtue-signaling policies across government agencies to promote assimilation over division.”
The seven-page directive instructs all federal agencies to reduce multilingual services and assess whether their programs would function better if delivered solely in English. Agencies must complete a comprehensive audit of non-English offerings and develop plans to eliminate “unnecessary multilingual offerings.” Any savings generated will be redirected toward English-language instruction and assimilation initiatives.
The memo also mandates the temporary suspension of LEP.gov—the federal portal for those with limited English proficiency. All public-facing language-access materials, such as letters, videos, and online training tools, must be paused pending an internal review.
Over the next 180 days, agencies must submit revised plans and solicit public feedback as they develop new language-access standards. According to the DOJ, this process will yield “clear, practical guidelines” that help agencies prioritize English usage while detailing when and how multilingual support remains essential to their missions.
The guidance urges agencies to consider tools like artificial intelligence and machine translation for situations where limited non-English support remains necessary, according to the Washington Examiner.
The DOJ memo also marks a significant change in civil-rights enforcement by rejecting the use of disparate-impact theory to require multilingual services. Disparate impact is a legal principle that bars ostensibly neutral policies that nonetheless disproportionately burden protected groups, even absent intentional discrimination.
Historically, agencies treated the lack of language assistance as discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, even absent any intent to discriminate. The DOJ now contends that this interpretation has no legal foundation, the outlet reported.
“A statute that classifies based on language, but is neutral on its face with respect to national origin, should be considered a mere proxy for national origin discrimination only if the classification is ‘unexplainable on grounds other than’ national origin discrimination,” the memo states, citing Supreme Court precedent.
