The school districts appealed.
## The Ninth Circuit
The appeal went to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Seven judges sat on the en banc panel. On April 14, 1947, they unanimously affirmed McCormick’s ruling.
But the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning was significantly narrower than McCormick’s district court opinion. The appellate court did not endorse the broad principle that segregation itself violated equal protection. It did not reach the question of whether “separate but equal” was constitutionally sound. Instead, the Ninth Circuit found a narrower ground: the segregation of Mexican American children in these four Orange County districts was not authorized by California state law. Because the practice lacked state legal authorization, it was impermissible — but this holding did not require the court to take on the “separate but equal” doctrine directly.
The practical result was the same as McCormick’s ruling: the families won, the school districts were ordered to stop the discriminatory assignment of children to Mexican schools. But the legal scope was more limited. The Ninth Circuit did not issue a ruling that could be read as undermining legally authorized segregation in states where it had explicit statutory backing. It had found against an unauthorized practice, not against segregation per se.
This distinction matters for understanding what Mendez v. Westminster actually held and what it did not hold. The case was a significant victory and a genuine precedent within its specific context. It was not a ruling that dismantled authorized segregation nationwide or overturned Plessy. The legal argument that would do that would have to come later.