With the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), MALDEF got a $2.2 million grant from the Ford Foundation. Inspired by the civil-rights era legal battles mounted on behalf of the African American community and knowledgeable of the pervasive discrimination against Latinos, lawyers and community activists throughout the southwestern United States launched efforts to create a legal …
The importance of MALDEF’s work as the law firm for the Latino community is greater today than ever before. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is a left-wing litigation and advocacy group focused on immigration, election procedure, and Census and demographic interest issues. Founded in 1968, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. In 2012, the Ninth Circuit agrees with MALDEF and strikes down portions of the law.MALDEF succeeds in persuading Congress to extend voting rights protections to Latinos a decade after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), legal-aid resource and activist organization established in 1968 by Mexican American lawyers in San Antonio, Texas, with help from a grant by the Ford Foundation.
We stood up on behalf of immigrants to fight Arizona’s SB 1070, the unconstitutional show-me-your-papers law. The case marks the first VRA lawsuit filed in California in more than a decade.MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) opened its doors on August 1, 1968 in San Antonio, Texas. We are fighting back against a multi-state lawsuit led by Texas challenging the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative on behalf of young immigrants who want nothing more than to live and thrive in the only country they have ever called home. In 1970, MALDEF challenged the Texas legislature for carving up voting districts to keep Latinos and other people of color out of power. The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear the case in 2012.For 50 years, MALDEF has been at work to achieve some of the most important legal victories advancing the civil rights of Latinos in the United States.MALDEF was consciously modeled on the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The challenge led to MALDEF’s first major national victory, when the Supreme Court’s ruling in White v. Regester struck a blow at racial gerrymandering and at-large elections systems.MALDEF challenges a Redondo Beach anti-solicitation ordinance as a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free expression. MALDEF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In its first three years, MALDEF handled mostly legal-aid cases. MALDEF was founded in San Antonio in 1968. Never before has the need been greater for advocacy and education that will open doors to the American dream. Inspired by the civil-rights era legal battles mounted on behalf of the African American community and knowledgeable of the pervasive discrimination against Latinos, lawyers and community activists throughout the southwestern United States launched efforts to create a legal organization to serve the Latino community.MALDEF challenges a Texas law denying funding to educate some immigrants. MALDEF represents three undocumented mothers living in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.In MALDEF’s first major national voting rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling finding multi-member voting districts in Texas are discriminatory and must be redrawn to allow Latinos and African Americans the chance to elect their own representatives.MALDEF files a lawsuit that results in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a lower court’s decision that held the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had gerrymandered districts to exclude Latinos from gaining representation. A state court rules for the first time in New Mexico’s history that education is a fundamental right under the state constitution.