Hernández v. Texas
Hernández v. Texas is a landmark Supreme Court case from 1954 that addressed issues of racial discrimination and equal protection under the law, specifically concerning the exclusion of individuals of Mexican descent from jury service. The case arose when Pete Hernández was convicted of murder in Jackson County, Texas, and claimed that the jury had been composed solely of Anglos, effectively denying him a fair trial. Despite evidence showing a long history of excluding jurors with Spanish surnames, Texas maintained that Hispanics were categorized as "whites," arguing there was no racial exclusion.
The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimously reversed Hernández's conviction, recognizing that Hispanics had been systematically treated as a separate class and were indeed excluded from juries in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision was significant for civil rights, affirming that discrimination against Hispanics was unconstitutional and setting a precedent for future cases. The ruling highlighted the need for acknowledging the distinct experiences of Hispanic Americans in the context of civil rights, paving the way for further legal recognition of Hispanics as a minority group. The case remains a critical reference point in discussions about racial discrimination and equal protection in the United States.
Hernández v. Texas
Identification U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred exclusion of Hispanics from trial juries
Date Decided on May 3, 1954
In Hernández v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down state policies that discriminated against Mexican Americans in jury selection, a ruling that helped pave the way for later decisions forbidding ethnic discrimination.
In 1950, Pete Hernández was charged with murder in Jackson County, Texas. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Hernández argued at trial that persons of Mexican descent were systematically excluded from the jury, thus denying him the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment .
It had long been established that exclusion of jurors of a defendant’s race or color was unconstitutional. Texas argued that Hispanics are “whites” in the interpretation of Texas statutes; consequently, there had been no racial exclusion of jurors in this case. Despite Hernández’s showing that no juror with a Spanish surname had served on a Jackson County jury during the prior twenty-five years, he lost in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. On Hernández’s petition, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
In an opinion written by Chief JusticeEarl Warren , the Court unanimously reversed Hernández’s conviction. There was clear evidence that Hispanics were treated as a separate class in Texas and that they had been systematically excluded from service on both grand and petit juries. This ruling stated that Hernández’s Fourteenth Amendment right to the equal protection of the laws had been violated.
Impact
This decision was an important victory for Hispanic civil rights as it established that anti-Hispanic discrimination is unconstitutional despite the earlier Caucasian-African American bent of state law and federal cases. Hernández v. Texas was an important precedent until 1971, when Hispanics were accepted as a discrete minority group in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD.
Bibliography
Lewis, Thomas T., and Richard Wilson, eds. Encyclopedia of the U.S. Supreme Court. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2000. Covers major cases of the Supreme Court and discusses their significance.
Rosales, Francisco A. Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. 2d rev. ed. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1997. Historical review of the Hispanic civil rights movement; discusses important cases and statutes.