Hernandez v. State of Texas (1954)
Facts: This case was the only Latino-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II. It involved the 1950 trial of a migrant cotton picker named Pete Hernandez for the murder of Joe Espinosa in Edna, Texas. The trial took place in a city where no one of Mexican origin had served on a jury in the town for over a quarter-century. Hernandez was convicted and his lawyer appealed on the grounds that he had not received his full Fourteenth Amendment protections.
The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, with the judges arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment covered only blacks and whites and not Mexican-Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the appeals court: They argued that, yes, the Fourteenth Amendment did indeed cover Mexican-Americans because they were a different "class" of citizens in the sense of "class" that the Fourteenth Amendment had been designed to protect.
Reasons: The U.S. Supreme Court found that the appeals court as well as the trial court had violated the Constitutional...
Municipal Court
Facts: Carolyn Bobb, an attorney, was called to serve on a jury. During the voir dire process she refused to answer certain questions (such as her husband's profession) on the grounds that while women were asked about their spouses men were not. She was held in contempt of court, and her initial appeal to have the contempt finding set aside was dismissed on the grounds that the legal protections that were granted to people because of their race did not apply to her.
Issues: The Appeals could found that Bobb had been denied her Constitutional right to equal protection under law, and reversed the finding of the municipal court. The appeals court found unpersuasive the argument that the men might have been asked the same questions and simply weren't to…
