1925 JAMES DEANDA 2006 RIP

Former U.S. District Judge James deAnda, who played a crucial role in a little-known, but pivotal 1954 case that recognized Hispanics as a protected class of people, died Thursday at his summer home in Traverse City, Mich., of prostate cancer. The Houston native was 81. DeAnda was the last surviving member of a legal team of four Hispanic attorneys behind the case, Hernandez v. Texas, which overturned an all-white jury’s murder conviction of a southeast Texas man. On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that Hispanics were a separate group deserving of the same constitutional protections as other minorities. “He is our Thurgood Marshall in many respects,” said Michael Olivas, a University of Houston Law Center professor and longtime friend, referring to the first black Supreme Court justice, who also played a key role in doing away with racial segregation. DeAnda went on to fight segregation of Hispanics within Texas’ schools and later became the second Hispanic federal judge in the U.S. He also served as a chief federal judge. In the Hernandez case, deAnda and his law partner John J. Herrera showed that Hispanics were essentially barred in Jackson County from serving as jurors despite making up 16 percent of the population at the time. The attorneys found that no Hispanic had ever served on any jury in a quarter of a century there. They noted in their case that minorities were forced to use segregated bathrooms in the same courthouse where the state argued Hispanics were classified as white. Bathrooms for Hispanics and blacks were in the basement, which bore the sign “Colored Men and Hombres Aqui,” said Olivas, whose book about the case was recently published.

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KJ