Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund

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The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is a national non-profit civil rights organization formed in 1968 to protect the rights of Latinos in the United States.^[1] Founded in Texas, it is currently headquartered in Los Angeles, California,^[1] and currently maintains regional offices in Sacramento, San Antonio, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.

Contents 1 Campaigns 2 Criticism 3 See also 4 External link 5 Notes

[edit] Campaigns

One of the most important organizations to win legal victories for Mexican Americans in lawsuits for civil rights, women’s rights, educational issues, and voting rights, MALDEF incorporated in San Antonio in 1967. With the help of LULAC and the NAACP, MALDEF got a $2.2 million grant from the Ford Foundation. This proved both helpful and harmful. The grant provided scholarships for more Mexican-American lawyers. But the Ford Foundation also used the grant as leverage to push MALDEF to relocate their headquarters out of the state and replace their executive director, in part because the foundation perceived some San Antonio staffers to be “militants.” MALDEF relocated to San Francisco and then Los Angeles but kept a regional office in San Antonio.

In its first three years, MALDEF handled mostly legal-aid cases. Then MALDEF took part in employment discrimination and school funding cases with the NAACP, including Supreme Court cases through friend-of-the-court briefs. Demetrio Rodriguez et al. v. San Antonio Independent School District was a defeat, with the court ruling against equal financing of education. White, et al. v. Regester, et al was an important victory. The case created single-member districts for Texas county, city council, and school board districts, ending at-large voting that had weakened minority voting power. In 1989 MALDEF won in Edgewood Independent School District v. State of Texas. The Texas Supreme Court found the state's financing of education unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to change it. This led to the “Robin Hood” funding system, where wealthier school districts had to give to a fund for poorer districts. This did not lead to educational equality, though, since wealthy districts could choose to spend even more on themselves.

MALDEF also set up an education-litigation project, filed on behalf of undocumented workers’ children barred from public schools. In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court held these children protected by the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This would not be the last time MALDEF filed suit for equal opportunity for education. In LULAC et al. v. Richards et al., a 1987 class-action lawsuit charged the State of Texas with discrimination against Mexican Americans in south Texas because of inadequate funding of colleges. In the University of Texas system, the UT campus in Austin (historically the campus attended by more of children of the state’s elites) actually received more funding than all other campuses combined. The jury did not find the state guilty of discrimination, but did find the legislature failed to establish "first-class" colleges and universities in elsewhere in the state. Looking to avoid further embarrassing suits, the legislature passed the South Texas Initiative to improve University of Texas System schools in Brownsville, Edinburg, San Antonio, and El Paso, and Texas A&M University System branches in Corpus Christi, Laredo, and Kingsville. The Border Region Higher Education Council helped pass the legislation and monitored the program's progress. Today the situation has somewhat improved, though UT Austin still receives a disproportionate share of funding.

In 1980 the organization established a leadership-development program, which trained 1,300 individuals by 1992; more than 50 percent of the program's graduates garnered appointments to local, state, and national public-policy boards. In Texas a goal was established of getting an additional 500 Mexican Americans into the program in the 1990s.

MALDEF concentrated on women's equity and voting rights. In 1974 it set up a Chicana Rights Project to challenge sex discrimination against Mexican-American women. The CRP lost its foundation support in the early 1980s, and MALDEF discontinued it. In the 1970s MALDEF joined the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project to battle voting inequities. The eighty-eight lawsuits filed by this project between 1974 and 1984 increased voter registration among Mexican Americans. MALDEF also successfully lobbied to ensure that the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 include Spanish-surnamed citizens in the Southwest.

Protecting the rights of immigrants is the focus of MALDEF's Immigrant's Rights Program. One of MALDEF's greatest successes was the final settlement reached in the case Gregorio T. v. Wilson. Under the settlement, Governor Gray Davis and the state of California officially agreed to dismiss their appeal of the district court's decision, striking down virtually every section of California's Proposition 187, which, when implemented, would have denied education, health care and social services to the state's undocumented immigrants.

To assist immigrants navigate their new lives in the United States, MALDEF produced the "Know Your Rights/Conozca sus derechos" Marcos y María radio education program in California. Designed as a series of brief vignettes in Spanish, each radio spot features the adventures of the characters, Marcos y María , discussing real life problems encountered by immigrants. The first ten radio spots included instructions for Latino immigrants on how to file income taxes, an outline of workplace laws and an explanation of the rights of tenants. Plans for a second round of radio spots, which would work to further enhance the awareness of immigrants, are currently underway.

The protection of immigrants language rights and fair housing were the issues in Veles v. Lindow, whereby MALDEF submitted an amicus brief to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case challenged a private landlord's policy of refusing to rent to monolingual Spanish-speaking tenants. MALDEF's brief argues that such policies have an adverse effect on Latinos and stand in violation of federal housing laws. Although the court has not returned a decision, MALDEF continues to respond to these and other unfair housing practices which disproportionately affect Latino immigrants.

MALDEF in Guevara v. City of Norcross, Georgia challenged a city ordinance restricting the use of a language other than English for any displayed sign serving a non-residential purpose. MALDEF's client, Mr. Guevera, is a minister who was cited by Georgia police for posting signs in Spanish announcing religious services to the local community. MALDEF succeeded in the dismissal of criminal charges against the minister because the ordinance was invalid as it was in direct violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

MALDEF continues to monitor federal and state proposed legislation, attend hearings, submit comments on matters that impact the fair and equitable treatment of immigrants. Work included the defeat of Texas legislation that would have expanded the U.S. Border Patrol's authority, in effect allowing them to disregard the Constitution's basic protection against unreasonable search and seizure when making arrests. MALDEF contended that the proposed legislation would have also increased Fourth Amendment violations by allowing Border Patrol stops based on racial profiling. MALDEF also advocated on behalf of immigrants detained in INS hub facilities. MALDEF challenged the placement of individuals in detention facilities far from their residence and based on their country of origin. This practice creates unreasonable hardship on detainees and their families, and also hinders the detainees' right to fair access to counsel. Because of the issues raised by MALDEF, the INS has since set aside the country of origin based detention facility plan while it considers other options.

MALDEF's work on the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) resulted in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) issuance of regulations that afford immigrants a presumption of hardship (rather than the requisite proof of hardship), more closely aligned with those previously conferred only to Cubans. The introduction of legislation to resurrect the Bracero Program was the focus of the second National Latino Summit on Guest Worker Legislation, co-sponsored by MALDEF in Washington, D.C. in May 2001. This three-day forum brought together labor leaders, farm workers and others to educate elected officials on the consequences of guest worker legislation.

MALDEF's case, Rodríguez v. Malloy, challenging the INS' unwarranted invasion of a family's home, served as an important reminder of our need to protect the often vulnerable rights of immigrants. MALDEF filed suit against the individual federal officers and filed an administrative claim seeking compensation for destroyed property and physical abuse.

MALDEF, along with the ACLU, sued Los Angeles County in 1981, accusing the county of arranging voting districts to frustrate Hispanic political power. Considerable changes in the district lines resulted.^[1] To get a fair share of school funding for downtown Los Angeles schools, MALDEF filed a lawsuit in 1992 against the Los Angeles Unified School District.^[1]

[edit] Criticism

Because of its stated agenda and lobbying record,^[2] many anti immigrant activists, nativists, and white supremacists regard MALDEF as one of the most aggressive proponents of illegal immigration and bilingulaism in the U.S. Others, including white racists, ironically label it "racist," based on remarks made on the air by Mario Obledo, a founder of MALDEF on the Tom Leykis radio show in the mid 90's.^[3]

[edit] See also

• NCLR
• LULAC
• American GI Forum

[edit] External link

• MALDEF website

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "MALDEF" entry in Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County, by Leonard and Dale Pitt, published by UC Press in 1997.
2. ^ http://www.thedustininmansociety.com/blog/?p=113
3. ^ http://www.thedustininmansociety.org/info/true_agenda_transcript.html#track05