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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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17:01
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After Harvard Law School, Cantú went back to Texas and worked in the Texas Attorney General's Office, in the Consumer Protection Division under Ann Richards. Specifically, she worked for the Nursing Home Taskforce where she and her colleagues fought for the rights of the elderly who were subject to abuse in retirement homes. Following her time at the Attorney General's office, Cantú and her husband moved to San Antonio. She then began working for MALDEF as an education lawyer. Cantú worked on important cases including Plyler v.s Doe, in which the State of Texas argued that they had the justification to exclude immigrant children from public education. MALDEF won that case.
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Synopsis |
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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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22:09
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Cantú sets the scene for the case of LULAC v. Richards (later Clements), introducing the lawyers on the case and their respective roles. She explains some important events and court cases leading up to LULAC v. Richards. The team of lawyers received advice from higher education officials, forming a plan centered around third party reports saying the State of Texas disproportionately distributed higher education funds across economic lines. She also cited an investigation of the State of Texas made by the US Department of Justice regarding segregation of higher education; as part of the settlement, Texas promised to invest in minority heavy colleges, but then failed to do so.
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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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44:02
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In response to the ruling of unconstitutionality, before the case was heard at the Supreme Court, the Texas legislature under Ann Richards acted to request a settlement proposal from the border region. This unified the border communities as they came together to decide how much each area needed for higher education. The state approved at total of $660,000,000 to go towards investing in higher education along the border. It was after the allocation of these finds that the case was seen in front of the Supreme Court, where they LULAC lost because the region had already been awarded that money. In the years following, that money was put into master's and doctoral programs as well as the creation of medical schools and other professional schools in cities such as Laredo and Corpus Christi. However, Cantú sees threats to public higher education funding in Texas today.
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