San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
First Latino to serve as justice on California Supreme Court
Cruz Reynoso, a son of migrant workers who toiled in the fields as a child and went on to become the first Latino state Supreme Court justice in California history, has died.
Reynoso died Friday at an elder care facility in Oroville (Butte County), according to his son, Len ReidReynoso. He was 90.
In a legal career that spanned more than half a century and took him from his first job in Imperial County to Sacramento, the softspoken family man helped shape and protect the first statewide, federally funded legal aid program in the country and guided young, minority students toward the law.
As an early director of California Rural Legal Assistance, Reynoso shepherded the organization’s efforts to ensure farmworkers’ access to sanitation facilities in the fields and to ban the use of the carcinogenic pesticide DDT.
“Many of the suits CRLA brought during his time fundamentally changed the law of this country,” Robert Gnaizda, who worked with Reynoso at the organization, said in an interview before his death in 2020. “If you want to talk about Latino heroes — and there are a number — I’d say Cruz is at the top of the list.”
But Reynoso, the son of Mexican immigrants, was probably best known for his career’s briefest chapter — his controversial entry to and exit from the California highest court.
When thenGov. Jerry Brown appointed Reynoso to the state Supreme Court in 1981, he said that he did not choose his nominee for the lofty legal position because of Reynoso’s Latino heritage. He called Reynoso “the most outstanding candidate I could nominate.”
Not everyone agreed. Although liberals and Latino groups lauded Reynoso’s selection, lawandorder organizations, conservatives and George Deukmejian, who was then the state attorney general, attacked Brown’s nominee.
But Reynoso was confirmed by the Judicial Appointments Commission, and during his five years on the state Supreme Court, he earned respect for his compassion. He wrote the court’s opinion in a case that gave homeowners the precedentsetting right to sue airports for jet noise that constituted a “continuing nuisance.”
And he penned the court’s opinion in a case that ruled nonEnglishspeaking defendants must be provided with interpreters at every phase of the criminal process.
Reynoso had heatedly denied during the confirmation process that he would favor the poor, minorities or criminal defendants. And, during close questioning by Deukmejian, he said he would enforce the death penalty.
The court was led by Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and was accused by critics of sidestepping the ultimate punishment. In 1986, she, Reynoso and Justice Joseph Grodin were rejected by voters.
Reynoso returned to practicing law and teaching, first at UCLA and then at UC Davis.
Born in Brea (Orange County) on May 2, 1931, Reynoso was one of 11 children. He graduated from law school at UC Berkeley in 1958. In 2000, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.