When was it decided that the courts would officiate absolutely every human dispute in a futile attempt to make life fair?

That's where we are -- as evidenced by the burgeoning brouhaha over the LPGA's decision to require members to be conversant in English.

Somewhere along the line, the courts have decided that employers can't require English unless it significantly affects safety or efficiency. And some legal experts are saying neither one applies to the Ladies Professional Golf Association, which announced this past week that in 2009 its tour members must be able to speak some English.

Good grief! You would think that the LPGA knows better than some judge whether English is a good thing for the tour.

Explains LPGA Deputy Commissioner Libba Galloway:

"We are not discouraging players from speaking other languages. They can talk to their caddy in whatever language they choose. They can speak to other players on the driving range in whatever language they choose. If they're Brazilian and a reporter asks them a question in Portuguese, by all means, answer it in Portuguese. And we're not demanding that the players be perfectly fluent in English. What we're saying is that the ability to speak to your pro-am partners and to the media, and for the winner to give their victory speech in English, will be one of our tournament regulations."

In other words, the LPGA has decided its players are ambassadors, and need to speak the international language enough to get by.

But someone, somewhere, will try to get the rule declared unconstitutional, or some such nonsense. Can you imagine asking the nation's Founders whether the government should get into the business of regulating sports leagues or otherwise telling employers what the various requirements of their jobs are?

Fact is, the government should take a lesson from the LPGA: It ought to require that government business in this country be conducted in English, and go about making English the official language of the United States. It does no immigrant any good to allow him to stay contained in his native language; to be successful in this country, over the long term, you must learn English. To pretend otherwise is to spread folly and to mislead new citizens.

The LPGA doesn't want language deficiencies to add to a player's handicap, and neither should the country want that for its new citizens.