User:Mig713/Mendez v. Westminster

Background
Mexican Americans, who were then considered to be white, were unaffected by legal segregation and normally attended segregated white schools. The Mendez family, who previously went to white schools without problems, suddenly found their children forced into separate "Schools for Mexicans" when they came to Westminster, even though that was not the norm and it was not legally sanctioned by the state. Starting in the 1940s, some school districts began to establish separate language-based "Mexican Schools", arguing that Mexican children had special needs because they were Spanish speakers. The districts would also argue that Mexican American children carry diseases that can pass through the schools and endanger the other children. The schools existed only for elementary children (K-4) and were intended to prepare them for mainstream schools. Since many districts began arbitrarily forcing Mexican elementary school children into "Mexican Schools" irrespective of language ability, it became a form of unlawful discrimination that was superficially similar to legalized racial segregation.

Five Mexican American fathers (Thomas Estrada, William Guzman, Gonzalo Mendez, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez) challenged the practice of Mexican school segregation in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles. They claimed that their children, along with 5,000 other children of "Mexican" ancestry, were victims of unconstitutional discrimination by being forced to attend separate "schools for Mexicans" in the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and El Modena school districts of Orange County. Mexicans were not in separate schools elsewhere in California.

Soledad Vidaurri went to the Westminster Elementary School District to enroll her children and those of her brother Gonzalo Mendez: Gonzalo, Geronimo, and Sylvia. The Westminster School informed Vidaurri that her children could be admitted to the school. However, Gonzalo, Geronimo, and Sylvia could not be admitted on the basis of their skin color. (Vidaurri's children had light complexions and Basque surnames and so would not be segregated into a different school.) Upon hearing the news, Vidaurri refused to admit her children to the school if her brother's children were not admitted as well. The parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, tried to arrange for Geronimo, Gonzalo, and Sylvia to attend the school by talking to the school administration, but both parties were not able to reach an agreement.

Gonzalo dedicated the next year to a lawsuit against the Westminster School District of Orange County. The school district offered to compromise by allowing the Mendez children to attend the elementary school without any other students of Mexican-American descent.

The Mendez family declined the offer and continued the lawsuit. The Mendez family believed in helping out the entire Mexican community, instead of a handful of children. The Mendez family covered most of the expenses for the various witnesses that would be present in the case. Soon the battle would begin. This would be a battle between districts who believed that language barrier can be an issue for these children, which was highly considered by the court when the trial came along. Against a side where the families are fighting for the end of Mexican school segregation.

The plaintiffs were represented by established Jewish American civil rights attorney David Marcus. Funding for the lawsuit was primarily paid for initially by the lead plaintiff Gonzalo Mendez, who began the lawsuit when his three children were denied admission to their local Westminster school. Marcus would make the argument that the schools are denying these childrens’ 14th amendment, that it denies equal protection, which would be a similar argument used in Brown vs. Board of Education. Marcus would add more to his argument when he addresses how teachers and other facility members of schools would look at a student and send them to one of these “Mexican” schools because of their last name or even how they looked. During the case itself, many children would also testify during the trial speaking on their instances where they would witness signs that compare Mexicans to dogs and how much of their culture would not be expressed within schools. So, it felt like they were isolated completely, which again, goes back to the whole reason why many families filed the suit in the first place. Marcus would continue his argument by arguing that segregating schools would affect these students psychologically and emotionally. He would call upon a sociologist and a

The man who would represent the schools districts would be Joel Ogle, who was also the attorney for Orange County. He would make a big push on his argument that the federal courts had no right to be taking this case as it involved K-12 education, and these types of cases would be a state matter. He would counterargue Marcus’ arguments by also stating that these “Mexican schools” were useful for those who not fluent in English and not use to American traditions. He would conclude his argument by stating that these schools were constitutional under the state of California and the Supreme Court rulings that approved “separate by equal” schools.

Senior District Judge Paul J. McCormick, sitting in Los Angeles, presided at the trial and ruled in favor of Mendez and his co-plaintiffs on February 18, 1946 in finding that separate schools for Mexicans to be an unconstitutional denial of equal protection. The school district appealed to the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which upheld Judge McCormick's decision, finding that the segregation practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the case was a victory for the families affected, it was narrowly focused on the small number of Mexican remedial schools in question and did not challenge legal race segregation in California or elsewhere. After Mendez, racial minorities were still subject to legal segregation in schools and public places.

Aftermath
Due to the school boards opting not to appeal the court case to the supreme court, the Mendez case ended as the first successful desegregation case in the nation. Governor Earl Warren, who would later become Chief Justice of the United States, signed the Anderson Bill in 1947 outlawing segregation only where it was not legal. At the time California had state laws sanctioning segregation of Native Americans and Asians, and that was eliminated because there were no federal laws that allowed for that. The Anderson bill did not end legal segregation for black people in California since that was federally legal.

Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae, including the NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall and Robert L. Carter and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling but not on equal protection grounds. It did not challenge the "separate but equal" interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that had been announced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Instead, the Ninth Circuit held that the segregation was not racially based, but it had been implemented by the school districts without being specifically authorized by state law, and it was thus impermissible irrespective of Plessy.

Although there is no data to substantiate the prevalence of separate education for Spanish speakers before and after Mendez, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research by Francisca M. Antman and Kalena Cortes, Mexican American students who started schooling after the case went into effect were in school an average of 0.9 years longer, and were 19.4% more likely to graduate high school than those students who started schooling pre-Mendez. Suggesting that placing students in these separate "Mexican Schools" was having a major effect on their graduation rate, and the decision in the case of Mendez v. Westminster made a positive change.

George L. Sanchez, who served as an expert witness in the case, was asked if the Mendez decision could have any influence on Brown v. Board of Education, and he exclaimed "No, there could be no connection!". Unlike Brown, Mendez never sought to challenge legal segregation in itself. The overriding issue in Mendez was that Mexicans were white children who were being arbitrarily segregated from other whites in the absence of any state or federal law for their alleged language handicap. "Does the present case attack Negro segregation where there is no law decreeing such segregation? Only in such a case would we be concerned." Since segregation for African-American children was legal, that was not of their concern in Mendez, and made the cases ultimately unrelated. Nevertheless, Thurgood Marshall, the same attorney who represented the Mendez family in their case also drew inspiration and utilized methods from their case in Brown v. Board of Education, ultimately linking the two cases with Mendez v. Westminster setting the stage for what was to come in Brown v. Board of Education.

Legacy
On December 8, 1997, the Santa Ana Unified School District dedicated the Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Intermediate Fundamental School in Santa Ana, California.

In 2003, writer/producer Sandra Robbie received an Emmy Award for her documentary Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children / Para Todos los Niños.

On September 14, 2007, the US Postal Service honored the 60th anniversary of the ruling with a 41-cent commemorative stamp. On November 15, 2007, it presented the Mendez v. Westminster stamp to the Mendez family, at a press conference at the Rose Center Theater in Westminster, California.

In September 2009, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School opened in Boyle Heights. The school was named after Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez, parents of American civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez, who played an instrumental role in the case.

On October 14, 2009, Chapman University's Leatherby Libraries dedicated the Mendez et al v. Westminster et al Group Study Room and a collection of documents, video and other items relating to the landmark desegregation case. Chapman also owns the last standing Mexican school building from the segregation era in Orange County.

On February 15, 2011, President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Sylvia Mendez, the daughter of Gonzalo Mendez, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. She, along with her two brothers, Gonzalo, Jr. and Jerome, were some of the Mexican-American students who were denied admission to their local Westminster school, which formed the basis for the suit. Sylvia was awarded the honor for her many years of work encouraging students to stay in school and to ensure that the importance of Mendez v. Westminster in American history will not be forgotten.

In September 2011, the Museum of Teaching and Learning (MOTAL), in partnership with a half-dozen government agencies and universities, opened a nine-month exhibition about the case at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana, California. The exhibition, for which the team won a 2013 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History, continues to travel to other locations to educate the public, both adults and students, about the details around this landmark case.