In 1954, seventy-four years after the U.S. Supreme Court held that African Americans could not be banned from jury service by statute, and fifty-four years after it ruled that they could not be purposely excluded from venires due to their “race or color” through court, executive, or administrative action, the Court found that Pete Hernandez had been denied equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. His constitutional rights were violated because of the de facto, systematic exclusion of Mexican Americans from the pool of potential jurors—and thus juries—in Jackson County, Texas.
Pandemic, Protest, and Agency: Jury Service and Equal Protection in a Future Defined by COVID-19