The 1954 landmark decision in Hernandez v. Texas was a triumph of Equal Protection. It was also the height of a legal career cut too short.
Written by Texas Law Magazine Staff
He had movie-star good looks and was a gifted orator. The brilliant young man from Laredo, Gustavo C. Garcia ’38, was a prodigy. Valedictorian of his high school class, Garcia received an academic scholarship to UT Austin, earning both his BA ’36 and LLB ’38 at a time when Texas segregated its public schools for children of Mexican descent.
After serving overseas in the JAG Corps in WWII, First Lieutenant Gus Garcia returned to San Antonio and began chipping away at discrimination. Working with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Garcia and Carlos Cadena ’40 successfully challenged a Texas school district’s segregation of children of Mexican descent in Delgado v. Bastrop ISD (1948), six years before Brown v. Board of Education would be decided.
Garcia and Cadena, joined by James DeAnda ’50, soon represented a murder defendant in what would become another 1954 landmark decision. Hernandez v. State of Texas challenged Texas’s jury selection process excluding Mexican Americans from serving. A unanimous court agreed, finding “the exclusion of otherwise eligible persons from jury service solely because of their ancestry or national origin is discrimination prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Cadena and Garcia shared the oral argument. Impressed with Garcia’s rebuttal, the Chief Justice voluntarily extended Garcia’s time by fifteen minutes, a rare occurrence then and now.
Following their success in Hernandez, Cadena and DeAnda enjoyed long and esteemed careers, both becoming judges. Garcia did not fare as well. He died in 1964 at age 48 from alcoholism. Lost to the world too soon, Garcia’s service to this country continues to inspire new generations.