jan 1, 1946 - Mendez v. Wesminster

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Overview: Sylvia Mendez was turned away from a California public school for whites only. Her father infuriated with what had happened decided to go the legal way and Gonzalo Mendez was then represented by a civil rights attorney and took four Los Angeles area school districts to court.

History: Before the infamous Supreme court case of Brown v. Board of Education that ended segregation in all schools seven years before this case even happened an incident occured in California regarding segregation, but this time it was with Mexican Americans. When Sylvia Mendez was nine years old she was turned away from the 17th school in Orange County, California. School officials told her aunt that since her kids were half white because of their last name and light skinned they would be able to enroll at 17th school, but the Mendez kids could not because of their of last name and how dark they were. Sylvia Mendez parents who were furious that this school would not let their child be enrolled in their school just because of the color of her skin decided to sue the school district. Her father Gonzalo Mendez then hired Thurgood Marshall who was also the attorney in the Brown v. The Board of Education who used a lot of the same arguments from Mendez v. Westminster. Thurgood Marshall then filed a class action suit in the U.S. District court not only on their behalf, but also on behalf of some other 5,000 people of Mexican and Latin descent. Judge McCormick then ruled this was a violation of the 14th amendment as he stated “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality”. The school districts appealed the case to the U.S. court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Court of Appeals affirmed Judge McCormick ruling and two months later Earl Warren California’s Governor signed a bill that ended segregation in schools in California. Making California the first ever state to officially desegregate schools.

Related Cases
Plessy v. Ferguson: In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were constitutional just as long both facilities were both equal for black and whites. John H. Ferguson argument in the supreme court case was that the segregation law violated the 14th amendment which forbid any state from denying “to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,". Not including the 13th amendment that banned slavery. This case was the foundation of challenging the racial segregation that plagued our country in the 19th and 20th century.

Brown v. Board of Education: Oliver Brown filed a class action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. This happened in 1951 when Brown's daughter Linda Brown was denied entrance to Topekas all white elementary school. In his lawsuit brown claimed that schools for black children were not equal to the white schools violating the 14th amendment. The State of Kansas sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and therefore was unconstitutional.

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