The Lasting Impact of Mendez v. Westminster in the Struggle for Desegregation

In the Immigration Policy Cnter’s latest Perspectives on Immigration, Maria Blanco, Executive Director for the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute at Berkeley Law, examines the impact of a federal circuit court’s 1947 decision which found the segregation of immigration families’ Mexican American school children in California unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit Court’s historic decision in the case Mendez v. Westminster proved to be critical in the strategic choices and legal analysis used seven years later in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case which ended racial segregation in U.S. schools.

 

 

KJ