Mendez, et al v. Westminster Sch. District

Before Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, there was the Mendez family in 1946. Like most parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez wanted the best education for their daughter, Sylvia. But the Westminster School District of Orange County, California, had other ideas. The Westminster schools wanted children like Sylvia, a Mexican child, segregated from white school children.

Sylvia’s parents refused to allow their child’s education to be based on “race.” Doing so would mean that Mexican children would receive an inferior education and be barred from attending better-equipped and better-resourced schools near their homes.

It is important to note a unique aspect of this case. Unlike the famous Brown v. Board of Education, this case was not an argument specifically against race-based discrimination. Though race was likely the underlying reasoning behind the initial segregation, Mendez v. Westminster School Districtwas a case based on ancestry because Mexican people were considered to be white by law. The Mendez family had even previously sent their children to school with white children previously without any issues.

In 1946 Sylvia’s parents, along with four other families, sued the Westminster School District.[1] During the trial, the Westminster School District argued that the separation of Mexican students into separate schools was for their benefit, arguing that Mexican students were deficient in their grasp of the English language and that they needed to be kept separate from white students as a result. Sylvia’s parents were represented by David Marcus, a Jewish-American Civil Rights attorney. He countered the arguments from the Westminster School District by having one of children denied schooling testify in court, showing that skill in English was obviously not a problem for these students, and that the discrimination was clearly racially motivated.

In February of 1946, Judge Paul J. McCormick decided in favor of Mendez and the other families, a landmark decision in Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District that deemed the segregation of Mexican children into “Mexican” schools was unconstitutional. In his decision, McCormick stated “a paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage.” The school district appealed, but the decision was upheld in 1947.

Mendez v. Westminster School District proved to be an important precursor to the pivotal case Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP wrote an amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which was considering the Mendez case. Just five years later, Marshall used the same reasoning he outlined in that amicus brief to argue against all racial discrimination in schools in Brown v. Board of Education.

Overall, Mendez v. Westminster School District was a major win for the families in the Westminster schools; but it left the rest of California free to segregate Mexican children. The narrow scope of the case still left much work to be done, but the herculean efforts to desegregate schools so that all children had equitable access to education, school resources, and equipment had only just begun thanks to the Mendez family search for justice.

[1] The fathers who made up the class action suit were Thomas Estrada, William Guzman, Gonzalo Mendez, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez.