Professor of Law, Civil Rights Advocate, State’s 1st Latino Supreme Court Justice
by Carla Meyer and Karen Nikos-Rose
May 09, 2021
Cruz Reynoso, the trailblazing lawyer, jurist, law professor and the first Latino California Supreme Court justice, has died at age 90. He died Friday (May 7) at an elder care facility in Oroville, according to his family. Cause of death had not been determined.
SCHOLARSHIP FUND
In lieu of flowers, the Reynoso family asks for contributions to the Cruz and Jeannene Reynoso Scholarship for Legal Access at the UC Davis School of Law.
Memorial arrangements are pending.
A University of California, Davis, School of Law professor from 2001 to 2006, he remained devoted to the law school, and the University of California, as an emeritus professor teaching students, speaking at events and leading special projects until recently. To the School of Law community, he was the civil rights icon who always had a moment to talk in the halls, about the law, publ
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In 1940s Orange County, future California Supreme Court justice Cruz Reynoso was just a teen trying to fight racism when he wrote to the U.S. postmaster general.
His family lived in a rural part of La Habra, where the Ku Klux Klan had held the majority of City Council seats just a decade earlier and Mexicans were forced to live on the wrong side of the tracks. Reynoso’s parents and neighbors had to travel a mile to the post office for their mail because the local postmaster claimed it was too inconvenient to deliver letters to their neighborhood.
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