First Latino Lawyers Argue Before Supreme Court
The oral argument before the Supreme Court in the case of Hernandez v. Texas on this day marked the first time that Latino lawyers had ever argued before the Court.
The case, organized by LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, challenged the exclusion of Latino citizens from juries in the state of Texas. On May 3, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all racial and ethnic nationalities in the U.S.
Interestingly, the decision came exactly two weeks before the Court delivered the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, on May 17, 1954, declaring racially segregated public schools unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Warren for the Court: “His only claim is the right to be indicted and tried by juries from which all members of his class are not systematically excluded – juries selected from among all qualified persons regardless of national origin or descent. To this much, he is entitled by the Constitution.”
Learn more about the case: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jrh01
Learn more: Felipe Fernandex-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (2013)
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)