Cruz Reynoso

Cruz Reynoso (May 2, 1931 – May 7, 2021) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist.

Reynoso was born in Brea, California on May 2, 1931.

He grew up as one of 11 children, and from age eight worked as an agricultural worker in orange groves.

His father was a farmworker.

When Reynoso was seven, the family moved to a barrio outside of La Habra, California.

While there, he attended the Wilson Grammar School, a racially segregated grade school for children of Mexican descent.

His junior high school was integrated, as was Fullerton Union High School, from which he graduated.

The United States Postal Service refused to provide Rural Free Delivery service within the barrio, even though non-minority families living nearby received the service.

Reynoso circulated a petition demanding service; the Postal Service responded to his petition and began providing mail delivery to the barrio.

He also challenged the local school board about the Wilson School, after which the school was desegregated.

After high school, Reynoso attended Fullerton College, a community college, receiving an associate of arts degree in 1951.

A dean from Pomona College offered him a scholarship if he applied and was admitted to that school.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Pomona College in 1953, after which he joined the U.S. Army, serving in the Counterintelligence Corps for two years.

He was stationed in Washington, D.C., where his assignments included reviewing the House Un-American Activities Committee files on potential applicants for Federal jobs, a task he found distasteful.

He received his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 1958.

Under a Ford Foundation fellowship, he studied constitutional law at the National University of Mexico in 1958–59.

Reynoso began his career in private law practice in El Centro, California.

He served as a legislative assistant in the California State Senate (1959–60).

He was an Associate General Counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1967 and 1968.

He then served as deputy director of California Rural Legal Assistance in 1968.

Shortly thereafter, internal problems at CRLA led to his assuming the directorship; he was the first Latino to hold the position.

His work with CRLA gained him national recognition.

Reynoso recalled that, during his tenure, CRLA was "mentioned not infrequently as being the leading legal services program in the country."

Then-Governor Ronald Reagan attempted to cut state funding for the CRLA during Reynoso's tenure, but the agency successfully resisted the challenge.

He was a professor of law at the University of New Mexico School of Law from 1972 to 1976.

In June 1976, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Reynoso to the California Court of Appeal as an associate justice.

He was the first Latino appointed to the Court.

In 1981, Governor Brown elevated Reynoso to the California Supreme Court, succeeding the retiring Mathew O. Tobriner.

George Deukmejian, then the attorney general and on the commission on judicial appointments, voted against Reynoso's confirmation.

Reynoso was the first Chicano Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, serving from 1982 to 1987.

He also served on the California Third District Court of Appeal.

In 1982, Reynoso was up for reconfirmation: under a measure adopted in 1934, California voters confirm a governor's appointments, and periodic unopposed elections are held for each justice during general elections, giving voters the opportunity to vote a justice out of office.

Deukmejian, running as a Republican candidate for governor, urged voters to vote against justices Otto Kaus, Allen Broussard, and Reynoso; he hoped to replace them with conservative appointees, creating a new majority on the Court.

The campaign labelled Kaus, Broussard, and Reynoso "Jerry's Judges".

All three justices were retained; Reynoso received the lowest margin of victory, receiving the vote of only 52 percent of voters.

In 1986, along with two other liberal members of the California Supreme Court—Chief Justice Rose Bird and Associate Justice Joseph Grodin—Reynoso became one of only three State Supreme Court justices ever recalled and removed by voters under California's judicial-retention election system.

A 1988 academic study of this election suggested that, although the retention election was theoretically nonpartisan and intended to retain justices based on their merit, partisan information (such as the affiliation of the governor who appointed the justice) is used by voters to structure their decisions in such elections.

He served as vice-chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004.

After leaving the bench, Reynoso spent ten years on the faculty of the UCLA School of Law and five years at the UC Davis School of Law; he was professor emeritus.

In 2000, Reynoso received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, for his efforts to address social inequities and his public service.