Mendez v. Westminster

Mendez v. Westminster, 64 F.Supp. 544 (C.D. Cal. 1946), aff'd, 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947), was a 1947 federal court case that challenged racial segregation in California schools. In its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, held that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional.

Background

On March 2, 1945, five Mexican-American fathers (Gonzalo Mendez, Thomas Estrada, William Guzman, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez) challenged the practice of school segregation in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. They claimed that their children, along with 5,000 other children of "Mexican and Latin descent," were victims of unconstitutional discrimination by being forced to attend separate "Mexican" schools in the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and El Modena school districts of Orange County. Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Mendez and his co-plaintiffs on February 18, 1946. However, the district appealed. Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae, including the NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall. More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the district court's ruling.

The appellate ruling

The Ninth Circuit ruled only on the narrow grounds that, although California law provided for segregation of students, it only did so for "children of Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian parentage." And because "California law does not include the segregation of school children because of their Mexican blood," therefore it was unlawful to segregate the Mexican children.

Presumably, then, the same lawsuit if filed by "Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian" children would have the opposite result. This was remedied on June 14 of the same year, when California Governor and future Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren signed into law a repeal of the last remaining school segregation statutes in the California Education Code. Thus ended "separate but equal" in California schools, and with it school segregation.

Seven years later, Brown v. Board of Education held "separate but equal" schools to be unconstitutional, thus ending school segregation throughout the United States.

Legacy

File:Medez v. Westminster USPS stamp, 2007.jpg

41-cent USPS commemorative stamp

On September 14, 2007, The United States Postal Service honored the 60th anniversary ruling of Mendez v. Westminster with a 41-cent commemorative stamp.

See also

• Sylvia Mendez
• Tape v. Hurley
• Brown v. Board of Education
• Plessy v. Ferguson
• Parents v. Seattle

Sources

1. “All Deliberate Speed” UC Press (1976), Charles Wollenberg. Each chapter provides a detailed history of the various non-white ethnic groups and their educational struggles in California.
2. “Knocking on the Schoolhouse Door” 8 La Raza Law Journal 166 (1995), Christopher Arriola. A look at one town involved in the lawsuit, El Modena, and an examination of the appellate briefs used in the case.
3. “Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation” UCI Press, (1992) Gilbert Gonzalez. A sociological history of Mexican School Segregation in the Southwest.
4. “The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans” Princeton University Press (2004) Stephen J. Pitti. A look at the history of Chicanos in San Jose, CA.
5. “The Barrios of Santa Ana” Dissertation published by the University of Michigan Press (1985), Mary Lisbeth Haas. A complete history of the Mexican Community in Santa Ana, CA, up to 1948.
6. “Chicanos in California” Materials for Today’s Learning (1990), Albert Camarillo. A short, concise history of Chicanos in California.
7. David S. Ettinger, The History of School Desegregation in the Ninth Circuit, 12 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 481, 484-487 (1979)
8. "The Mexican American Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity in Mendez v. Westminster: Helping to Pave the Way for Brown v. The Board of Education." Richard Valencia, Teacher's College Record, Vol. 107, Number 3, March 2005, P.389.

External links

• "District court ruling". Retrieved 2006-09-11.
• "Ninth Circuit opinion (PDF)" (PDF). Retrieved 2006-09-11.