"There is no connection!"

 

A year after Sweatt v. Painter, the U.S District Court for the District of Kansas heard Oliver Brown's suit against the Topeka School District for refusing to allow his third-grade daughter, Linda, to attend the white elementary school, which was nearer to her house than the segregated grade school on the other side of a railroad switchyard.

When Wirin suggested in 1953 that the Mendez and Delgado segregation cases in California and Texas would likely influence the outcome of the Brown cases, [George] Sanchez exclaimed: "There is no connection!" Our cases really were on the "due process' clause[that segregation was] ('arbitrary, capricious') much more than on the equality...clause - whereas the present [Brown] cases attack the right of the states to legislate segregation (something which has never been done for Mexicans). "Does one of the present cases attack Negro segregation where there is no law decreeing such segregation? Only in such a case would we be concerned."

For Sanchez the overriding issue was not the constitutional right of states to legislate segregation, but rather the illegality of segregating Mexicans from other whites in the absence of state law. While Thurgood Marshall sought to overturn a half-century-old Supreme Court decision, Sanchez challenged local school districts that arbitrarily segregated Mexicans for their alleged language handicap.

Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.