Thomas A. Saenz

Los Angeles

The longtime general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thomas A. Saenz, continues to take cases up to the federal appellate courts and beyond in a quest for equality. He has had a string of successes.

He was at the forefront of successfully challenging the landmark Prop. 187 in 1994 and now, all these years later, he is seeing a resurgence of the same type of issues — denying various rights to Latinos. This time, it’s banking and employment.

“Another issue of great concern is this phenomenon of discrimination in the consumer arena — banks, credit unions and the like against people based on their immigration status,” Saenz said. “They range from even precluding folks from opening bank accounts, which is hard to see how that would have anything to do with what someone’s immigration status, but also extend to loans, credit cards and the like.”

MALDEF has sued and led class actions against various banks and many of the cases are settling. California has a law prohibiting this, but for other states, MALDEF includes a federal equal rights statute.

On the employment front, Saenz had a rare defeat in the circuit courts regarding a company that refused to hire an intern who was a DACA recipient with approval to work in the U.S. He said two of the three 4th Circuit judges were Trump appointees. Resendiz v. ExxonMobil Corporation, 5:20-cv-00692 (E.D. N. Carol, filed Dec. 24, 2020).

“It’s a defeat, but it won’t kill us. We have a number of these employment cases,” Saenz said. “What astounds me is that they’ve all gone very well with a few exceptions.”

Companies claim that they want long-term employees but don’t research this issue with American citizens, Saenz said.

MALDEF is doing more work today on private discrimination compared to a decade ago when most cases focused on government actions.

“Anti-immigrant discrimination is still around and thriving,” he said. “We are doing these cases for a couple of reasons; because private discrimination can have a big impact when it has to do with employment and access to capital. But also, we are doing this work in preparation for a legalization program.”

—Tori Richards