Thurgood Marshall Award
The ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities is proud to announce that Lawrence R. Baca will receive the 2012 Thurgood Marshall Award at a dinner during the 2012 ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. Mr. Baca, a Pawnee Indian, is a retired civil rights lawyer and a pioneer in the fight for the civil rights of American Indians. He was the first American Indian lawyer hired by the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice (“Department” or “DOJ”), and, over his thirty-two year career, participated in more civil rights enforcement actions on behalf of American Indians than any other attorney in the history of the Department. On April 23, 2008, at a private ceremony in the Office of the Attorney General at DOJ, Baca was presented with the Attorney General’s Medallion, the highest award that the Attorney General can present to a retiring employee.
Baca was responsible for many cutting-edge civil rights cases on behalf of American Indians. His five education enforcement actions represent all of the cases ever filed by the Education Section of the Division on behalf of American Indians. Prior to Meyers & United States v. San Juan County School District, no federal court had ever ruled that American Indian students have a right to equal educational opportunity from the states where they live because they are citizens of those states. Upon reading the court’s opinion for the first time, the attorney for the private plaintiffs declared, “This is the Brown v. Board of Indian education.” Meyers is the leading federal civil rights case in the area of Indian education.
Baca also worked on hundreds of cases involving African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Collectively, his overall record at DOJ was unique—he never took a case to trial. His investigative skills, discovery acumen, and negotiating talent allowed him to settle all of his cases by consent decree. Baca holds the distinction of being the only attorney in the history of the Civil Rights Division who was promoted to Senior Trial Attorney without actually having a trial. His supervisors noted at the time that his negotiation skills saved court time and Department resources.
In the American Bar Association, Baca was a three-term chairman of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, having previously served on the original Task Force on Race and the Bar and then the Commission on Minorities in the Profession. He also served on the Council on Racial & Ethnic Justice and the Committee on Problems of the American Indian in the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities (now the Native American Concerns Committee).
Established by the American Bar Association and the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities in 1992, the Thurgood Marshall Award honors U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who epitomized individual commitment, in word and action, to the cause of civil rights in this country. The award recognizes similar long-term contributions by other members of the legal profession to the advancement of civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights in the United States.
