Opinion: If Earl Warren Was Still Chief Justice, the Immunity Decision Would Never Have Happened

When I was 13 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas was violating the Constitution by officially discriminating against people who looked like me. The court said Mexican Americans were due the same civil rights as white Americans.

When I read the case, Hernandez v. Texas (May 1954), as a college student studying law, I loved the court, especially the new Warren court.

After the Hernandez decision, the court unanimously ruled that “separate but equal” schooling in Kansas and elsewhere was unconstitutional.

“Separate but equal” came about when Black people were required to ride in separate railroad cars under Louisiana state law. The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that it was not a civil rights violation as long as the separate railroad cars had seats, no matter how austere or ratty. That was equal enough.

But the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (May 1954) case changed all that. It was a unanimous decision by eight old white men, some of them from the South, led by former California Gov. Earl Warren.

When I read the case, my appreciation for Warren and his court grew. He had been nominated Chief Justice by President Dwight Eisenhower as a political reward for support in the 1952 presidential campaign. And it proved a momentous appointment.

Though I wasn’t forced to attend segregated schools, people my age in many states and localities were. I served in the Marines with Southern Black men of my age who had never ridden a bus that wasn’t segregated until they rode one from San Diego’s airport to the recruit depot. They had never sat in a mixed classroom until they sat with me in boot camp classes. They had never eaten with whites until they ate their first meal as a U.S. Marine.

They wouldn’t be allowed to vote, like I did for the first time in 1962, until 1965. That’s when the Voting Rights Act finally allowed my Black fellow Marines from the South to vote. It had been an official right since the 15th Amendment was ratified into the Constitution in 1870 , but long blocked by racist Southern governors.

The Constitution and the Supreme Court made life for me and people like me in the United States worthwhile. I am thankful to God that the United States was what it was for me and proud to be an American every time I read the Supreme Court decisions I had to study as a pre-law student.

I disagreed with the Supreme Court in 1973 when it ruled abortion legal nationally and agreed when the current court threw out the abortion decision, sending the question back to the states. So I’m not a liberal.

Nonetheless, I disagree with the court after it ruled a President has immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.

Such immunity applies only to “official acts.” But the court didn’t define those acts and left interpretation to a case-by-case basis. More importantly, it precluded evidence developed from an official act from being used as support that a President committed a crime.

In this landmark case, Donald Trump was rescued by six justices of the court for political, not legal reasons.

Why did they do that? They didn’t have to. Six justices saved Trump because they wanted to. I can understand Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito selling out. But the other four?

Monday’s decision would have never happened if Earl Warren was still Chief Justice.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Marine Corps veteran, political consultant, prolific author and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and Facebook.