By: HISTORY.com Editors

1954

Supreme Court rules in Hernandez v. Texas, broadening civil rights laws

Published: October 07, 2019Last Updated: May 28, 2025

The Supreme Court issues a momentous ruling that clarified the way that the American legal system handled charges of discrimination. In Hernandez v. Texas, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all racial and ethnic groups facing discrimination, effectively broadening civil rights laws to include Hispanics and all other non-whites.

The defendant, Peter Hernandez, was a Mexican American agricultural laborer, part of the influx of such workers that had come to Texas during and after World War II. Hernandez was convicted of killing a man in cold blood in Jackson County, Texas, but his legal team, which was drawn mostly from one of the oldest Latino civil rights groups in the nation, the League of United Latin American Citizens, appealed. They pored through the records of jury selections in Jackson County, an area with a substantial Hispanic population, and found that not one of the roughly 6,000 jurors selected over the previous 25 years had a Hispanic last name. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been passed in 1868 and guaranteed equal protection under the law to all African Americans, Hernandez's lawyers claimed he had been deprived of equal protection because discrimination prevented him from being tried by a jury of his peers.

Hispanic History Milestones: Timeline

From Spanish colonialism and civil rights laws to Supreme Court decisions on immigration, here's a timeline of events in Hispanic history.

By: HISTORY.com Editors

A Texas appeals court upheld Hernandez's conviction, but the case went to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the State of Texas did not deny the charge of discrimination. Instead, they argued that such discrimination was not prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment, stating that it applied only to African Americans. Writing on behalf of himself and the other eight justices, Chief Justice Earl Warren dismissed this notion, saying, "The Fourteenth Amendment is not directed solely against discrimination due to a 'two-class theory'—that is, based upon differences between 'white' and Negro."

The decision that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all racial minorities, not just the one its authors had had in mind, has had immense consequences for the Hispanic community and every other minority group that has sought equal protection in the face of racial discrimination. As the civil rights movement progressed, Hernandez v. Texas ensured that every moment of legal progress for one minority was a victory for all.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 3rd

1469

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1810

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1933

Funk master James Brown is born

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1942

The Battle of the Coral Sea begins

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1946

Japanese war crimes trial begins

In Tokyo, Japan, the International Military Tribunals for the Far East begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II. On November 4, 1948, the trial ended with 25 of 28 Japanese defendants being found guilty. Of the three other […]

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1947

New Japanese constitution goes into effect

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1948

U.S. Supreme Court decides Paramount antitrust case

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1951

Congressional hearings on General MacArthur begin

The Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, meeting in closed session, begin their hearings into the dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur by President Harry S. Truman. The hearings served as a sounding board for MacArthur and his extremist views on how the Cold War should be fought. General MacArthur served as commander of U.S. […]

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1952

Joseph Fletcher lands first aircraft on the North Pole

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1962

Trains collide near Tokyo, killing more than 160 people

Two commuter trains and a freight train collide near Tokyo, Japan, killing more than 160 people and injuring twice that number on May 3, 1962. It was Constitution Day in Japan when a commuter train pulled out of Mikawashima station at 9:30 p.m. taking passengers out of Tokyo. Three miles north of the city, a […]

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1968

Students protest at the Sorbonne in Paris, kicking off month of unrest

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1980

MADD founder’s daughter killed by drunk driver

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1992

Kidnapped Exxon executive dies in a wooden box

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2007

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann goes missing in Portugal

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