Occupation Lawyer, Educator Name Norma Cantu | Role Lawyer Education Harvard Law School | |
Born 2 November 1954 ( 1954-11-02 ) Brownsville, Texas | ||
Norma V. Cantú (born November 2, 1954) is an American civil rights lawyer and educator. She is currently a professor of both its law and education at the University of Texas at Austin. She served as the Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office for Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton and as regional counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF).
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Education
In 1977, at the age of 22, Cantú received her law degree from Harvard Law School. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Texas-Pan American in 1973. She graduated from Brownsville High School(now Hanna High School) in Brownsville, Texas in 1971.
Career
Cantú started her career as an English teacher in Brownsville, Texas, in 1974. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she worked with the Nursing Home Task Force of the Texas Attorney General's office and as an English teacher in San Antonio, Texas.
She joined MALDEF in 1979, serving as a trial and appellate lawyer in federal and state courts in class action impact civil rights cases. In 1983, she was named the National Director of the Carnegie Endowment-funded Education, Litigation and Advocacy Project at MALDEF and also worked as a Staff Attorney on the Chicana Rights Project. In 1985, she became the regional counsel and education director of MALDEF, overseeing its offices in Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. That same year, she was named as one of the "100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S." by Hispanic Business Magazine. While at MALDEF she litigated scores of important cases affecting educational funding, disability rights, student disciplinary policies, access to special services for English-language learners, and racially hostile environments.
Public service
On March 5, 1993, President Clinton nominated Cantú to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. She was sworn in on May 24, 1993.
She served the nation for eight years in this capacity, where she oversaw a staff of approximately 850 in implementing governmental policy for civil rights in American education. Within the first two years, her office increased the number of illegal discrimination complaints resolved by 20%; more than a third of the cases were disposed of without adversarial proceedings based on voluntary corrective action. By her final year in office, the number of cases resolved each year had risen almost another 20%.
In 1996, Cantú reshaped the environment for women athletes at educational institutions. She interpreted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal statute that was created to prohibit sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal financial assistance, as requiring schools to offer "proportional opportunity" for female and male athletes. She led the effort to redefine opportunity to mean the number of women playing sports, not the number of spots available on a school's teams. This reinterpretation, while opening doors for a number of women athletes, was not without criticism. Some have argued that this approach has resulted in a cut in some male sports programs, specifically wrestling and gymnastics. According to some critics, universities have had to drop these less lucrative and less popular male sports programs to make way for women sports programs. Her work on Title IX resulted in her being named to the Women’s Institute on Sports and Education Hall of Fame on September 27, 1996 and as one of the "50 Most Influential People in College Sports" by College Sports Magazine.
Professor
Since 2001, Cantú has served as a visiting professor of law and education at the University of Texas at Austin. While at UT, she has developed and taught courses on disability law, school reform, performance management in education, politics and policy in education, and the intersection of law and policy in education.
In 2002, Cantú co-founded the Mexican-American Legislative Leadership Foundation, a not-for-profit organization to encourage students to gain experience on staff to the Texas legislature. She currently serves on its board.
In 2004, the American Bar Association's Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession honored Cantú with its Spirit of Excellence Award for "opening doors for many and preventing other doors from closing." The award is given each year to "celebrate the efforts and accomplishments of lawyers who work to promote a more racially and ethnically diverse legal profession."