Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice

“To me it was obvious that a wise Latina judge who might have had different experiences than other folk would have something to add to the Court. That’s how judges learn from each other.” Cruz Reynoso has a particular perspective on the controversy over Sonia Sotomayor‘s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, he has his own sort of “wisdom.” “I was the only person on the [California] Supreme Court who had ever worked as a farm worker,” he points out, “If issues came up pertaining to that, I would absolutely know more than my colleagues.”

Reynoso’s experience is the focus of Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice, premiering 15 September on KQED, as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. The documentary traces Reynoso’s humble beginnings in Brea, California, as to his success as a poverty lawyer and respected judge. His story is as extraordinary as the film’s shape is conventional however: Reynoso’s individual achievements have been premised on his sense of community. He is wise in multiple ways.

The third of 11 children in a family of farm workers, Reynoso and his older brother were early on determined to go to school. Their mother complained that they did not follow a traditional path, that is, they did not quit school at 16 in order to work full time in the fields to help support the family. “She would say, ‘Look how lazy my older boys turned out to be,’ Reynoso smiles now, “‘Instead of being out there working, they’re still reading books.'” His sister Maria Duran adds that she was surprised then, at her brother, “who was very bright, that was reaching for things that I didn’t see around me in the barrio.” Cruz’s vision — and his many hours of reading — led to a scholarship at Pomona College, Boalt Law School, and a law degree.

As soon as he “hung out a shingle” in El Centro, California in 1958, Reynoso remembers, he meant to represent his community. And so, when he met a young activist named Cesar Chavez, he was inclined to take up the cause of workers’ rights. Feeling that the rural poor in particular were underrepresented in the courts, Reynoso focused his energies on providing such representation. As the first director of the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), Reynoso was soon caught between Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association and Governor Ronald Reagan’s agribusiness agenda. Feeling that the CRLA couldn’t represent the farm workers’ organization per se and consistently pushing back against exploitation by employers, Reynoso did his best to negotiate an increasingly complicated mine field of interests — always with his focus on representing workers, and fighting for their civil rights.

A montage of headlines and photos lays out Reynoso’s various run-ins with Reagan. The CRLA won numerous cases, including one involving the growers’ insistence that a short-handled hoe was more efficient, even as it was also, according to a CRLA lawyer, a “brutal instrument.” As Jessie De La Cruz reports the injuries she suffered as a result of using the hoe, the film makes the sort of case Reynoso’s CRLA made, that is, putting human faces on industry statistics, drawing attention to the hardships suffered by impoverished workers, workers who otherwise had no voice. Another worker in archival footage tells an interviewer how remarkable the CRLA was at the time: “There was a big change in the attitude of the lawyer toward the client,” he says, “They made us feel like we were the president of Ford Motor Company.”

Reynoso suggests that the even as “We were winning a lot of cases,” this was because “the violations are so clear.” But the choices the CRLA made — with regard to whom to represent and how to bring cases — were also culturally intelligent and politically savvy. Abby Ginzburg’s documentary lays out the connections between Reynoso’s moral investments and his career decisions. He became one of the first Latino law professors in the country, employed at first by the University of New Mexico Law School. Governor Jerry Brown appointed him as the first Latino justice on the California Supreme Court, and in 2000, as Vice-Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (appointed by President Clinton), Reynoso guided the only official study of the voting rights abuses in Florida during the presidential election. The hearings revealed that voters were disenfranchised, many non-felons deemed felons, for instance, through a series of violations that determined the election’s outcome.

Still, Reynoso remains optimistic and determined. The commission’s hearings led to the passing of the Help America Vote Act. And now, at age 80, Reynoso is a professor of law at UC Davis as well as a farmer. Walking in his straw hat, horses and chickens in the background, he calls his physical efforts a pleasure: “I like to work out,” he says.