'My English is good enough"

In a small Arizona town, a woman named Alejandrina Cabrera is running for city council. She is Hispanic and bilingual...sort of. A judge recently ruled that her name couldn't be on the ballot because she doesn't speak English well enough to run for public office (you can read the full article here).

According to the article, Cabrera's community is 98.7% Hispanic, and 87% of them speak a language other than English at home (ie Spanish). Cabrera is a US citizen who graduated from a bilingual high school. She rates her own English skills as a 5 out of 10. Most of (dare I assume all) the other city council members are bilingual. Meetings are conducted in English, but with a Spanish-speaking community, and much of her interaction would be in Spanish. As with most foreign language speakers, her comprehension is higher than her productive abilities, but in a court evaluation, she struggled to answer questions put before her by the court.

Arizona does have an English-only law, and in 1910 Arizona became a state under the stipulation that "The ability to read, write, speak, and understand the English language sufficiently well to conduct duties of the office without aid of an interpreter shall be a necessary qualification for all state officers and members of the state legislature." Now if Cabrera's English is so poor that she requires a translator, I would agree wholeheartedly with the judge. Cabrera, however, believes she can function efficiently as is, and even studies with a tutor to improve her English. The law does not specify a particular level of English one must speak as long as one can understand sufficiently well.

I'm reminded of a particular southern state representative who, when giving a testimony at a congressional hearing (or some similar type of event...I can't quite remember) was nearly incomprehensible to a speaker of Standard American English. But her constituents understood her well enough to vote her into office, so who am I to complain that I didn't understand her dialect? I think the same principal applies here. Cabrera is an ideal representative of the people of her community; they want someone who speaks like they speak and knows what it's like to grow up bilingual. 

I tend to agree with them. I think this issue goes beyond the English-only debate; Cabrera is not arguing that Spanish should be used on the city council, but that her English, imperfect thought it may be, is good enough. And in a country full of languages, dialects, and accents, I think that's all we should ask for. Thoughts?