he Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas Legislature and the top administrators in the public higher education systems have taken actions that can be seen as largely supportive of increasing Latino access despite Hopwood. Public opinion is generally supportive of diversity but critical of racial preferences. The paper concludes that the strongest opposition to Latino access is found in the legal establishment; i.e., the courts, the Texas Attorney General and some law school faculty. IntroductionThe rapid growth of the Latino population is one the key features of the American landscape in the last part of the twentieth century. During the 1970s, the Latino population of the U.S. grew by 57%. During the 1980s, it grew by 54%. These rates stand in sharp contrast to the rates for the Anglo (i.e. white non-Latino) population which grew by 1% during the'70s and 4% during the'80s. In Texas between 1970 and 1990, the Latino population grew by 45% each decade. Now more than one of every four Texans is Latino. All population projections show that the Hispanic population will continue to grow rapidly. Under some assumptions, they could become the largest part of the state's school-age within a decade. It is difficult to believe that there is not a relationship between the growing Latino population and the growing attacks on Latino civil rights. Latino civil rights have faced severe restrictions since the mid-nineteenth century. Observers of that period saw that the Mexican-origin residents of Texas were subject to prejudice and contempt. This ignominious beginning of restricted Latino civil rights in the U.S. was the foundation for other gross civil rights violations in the twentieth century such as blocked access to the ballot box, de jure segregation into inferior schools, residential segregation and widespread employment discrimination (MALDEF, 1996; Montejano, 1987). Such violations of civil rights are not only part of Latino hi...
