[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 721 Introduced in House (IH)]







110th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 721

Recognizing the 60th anniversary of the Mendez v. Westminster decision 
  which ended segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students in 
              California schools, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            October 9, 2007

Mr. Gonzalez (for himself, Mr. Hinojosa, Mr. Becerra, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. 
 Serrano, Mr. Baca, Mr. Gutierrez, Mrs. Napolitano, Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. 
Salazar, Ms. Linda T. Sanchez of California, Mr. Honda, Mr. Pastor, Ms. 
 Velazquez, and Mr. Wu) submitted the following resolution; which was 
               referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Recognizing the 60th anniversary of the Mendez v. Westminster decision 
  which ended segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students in 
              California schools, and for other purposes.

Whereas Mendez v. Westminster was a 1947 Federal court case that challenged 
        racial segregation in California schools;
Whereas in its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 
        in an en banc decision, held that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican 
        American students into separate ``Mexican schools'' was 
        unconstitutional;
Whereas on March 2, 1945, a group of Mexican-American fathers (Thomas Estrada, 
        William Guzman, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez), led by Gonzalo 
        Mendez on behalf of his daughter Sylvia, challenged the practice of 
        school segregation in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles;
Whereas the fathers claimed that their children, along with 5,000 other children 
        of ``Mexican and Latin descent'', were victims of unconstitutional 
        discrimination by being forced to attend separate ``Mexican'' schools in 
        the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and El Modena school districts 
        of Orange County;
Whereas Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Mendez and his co-plaintiffs 
        on February 18, 1946;
Whereas the Westminster school district appealed the decision of the district 
        court;
Whereas when the district appealed Judge McCormick's decision, several 
        organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae, including the 
        NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall;
Whereas more than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of 
        Appeal affirmed the district court's ruling;
Whereas the Ninth Circuit ruled only on the narrow grounds that, although 
        California law provided for segregation of students, it only did so for 
        ``children of Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian parentage'' and did not 
        provide for ``the segregation of school children because of their 
        Mexican blood,'', therefore it was unlawful to segregate the Mexican 
        children;
Whereas later in 1947, California Governor and future Chief Justice of the 
        United States Earl Warren signed into law a repeal of the last remaining 
        school segregation statutes in the California Education Code and thus 
        ended ``separate but equal'' in California schools and with it school 
        segregation;
Whereas seven years later, Brown v. Board of Education held ``separate but 
        equal'' schools to be unconstitutional, ending school segregation 
        throughout the United States; and
Whereas on April 14, 2007, the Mendez family celebrated the 60th anniversary of 
        the Mendez v. Westminster decision: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, that the House of Representatives--
            (1) recognizes the 60th anniversary of the Mendez v. 
        Westminster decision which ended segregation of Mexican and 
        Mexican American students in California schools;
            (2) honors the Mendez family and congratulates Sylvia 
        Mendez for her continued efforts to keep alive the importance 
        of this case and the impact it had on her future; and
            (3) encourages the continued fight against school 
        segregation and the education of the people of the United 
        States of the civil right implications of the Mendez v. 
        Westminster case.
                                 <all>