## The Trial
The trial began in July 1945 in Courtroom No. 8 of the United States Court House and Post Office in Los Angeles, a Depression-era federal building that was about five years old at the time. Judge Paul J. McCormick presided.
The trial lasted six days. Marcus called witnesses to address the educational conditions and psychological effects of segregation. Social scientists testified that segregation threatened children’s sense of self-worth, that the separation itself produced the suggestion of inferiority regardless of what resources the separated schools contained. This use of social scientific testimony was a deliberate strategic choice — it moved the case beyond the question of whether the buildings were of equivalent quality and toward the question of what the act of segregation itself did to children.
Perhaps the most significant evidentiary moment was the testimony concerning who, exactly, was being placed in the Mexican schools. The districts had justified the segregation on the basis of language need. Witnesses demonstrated that placement was not based on any language assessment — it was based on surname and visible ancestry. Children who bore Spanish surnames were assigned to Mexican schools without anyone testing their English proficiency. The Mendez children, for instance, had previously attended schools elsewhere and all spoke English fluently. Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome Mendez were in the Mexican school not because they needed English instruction but because they were identifiably Mexican.
Judge McCormick was a former member of Congress from California who had been appointed to the federal bench. His conduct of the trial and his eventual ruling suggested that he took the constitutional questions seriously rather than treating them as conveniently settled.