I walked by the Thurgood Marshall statue several times today.

With special meaning, because of the passing of Linda Brown, the young girl on whose behalf Marshall sued in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Marshall statue is the centerpiece outside the State House, but there are two smaller statues.

One is of Linda Brown and another elementary school student.

The other is of the plaintiff in the first case Marshall brought in his legal strategy to end segregation, the “separate but equal” legal doctrine.

In 1934, he sued the University of Maryland Law School to admit Donald Gaines Murray.

Murray and I share something in common. Both of us went to Amherst College.

—

A bill in my committee would require the state government to provide foreign language access on state websites if 0.5% of Maryland’s population with limited English proficiency speaks a certain language instead.

Spanish and Chinese are the two that meet that requirement.

This must be done only if there’s no cost to the state.

Google Translate meets the test.

Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, emigrated to Maryland from the Soviet Union when he was six years old.

Whether or not he was English proficient, it makes the point.