David Hinojosa

David G. Hinojosa is the Southwest Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the nation’s premier Latino civil rights law firm. Since he joined MALDEF in 2003, Mr. Hinojosa has become a leading litigator and advocate in the area of civil rights, with a focus on educational civil rights impact litigation on behalf of Latinos.

Among current cases, Mr. Hinojosa serves as MALDEF’s lead counsel for: low income and English Language Learner (ELL) children in Colorado and Texas where he successfully challenged the inadequacy of both state school finance systems; DREAM students intervening to successfully defend a challenge to Texas’s in-state tuition law for undocumented immigrants; and ELL children suing for quality language programs and monitoring in Texas. Mr. Hinojosa has also served as lead counsel in a number of other impact cases, including Garcia v. Padilla, where a New Mexico court permanently enjoined a state program requiring foreign national driver’s licenses holder to re-verify their eligibility; Salazar v. Texas DPS, in which he successfully challenged the adoption of discriminatory driver’s license rules applied to noncitizens; Dominguez v. Texas, where he restored college tuition exemptions for military veterans who were naturalized citizens and legal permanent resident immigrants; and Santamaria v. Dallas ISD, where he ended segregative classroom assignments of minority schoolchildren in an elementary school. Mr. Hinojosa has also presented testimony to local and state governments, lectured at undergraduate universities and law schools, and served as an expert panelist at many local, state and national conferences.

A graduate of Edgewood High School in San Antonio and a former air traffic controller in the U.S. Air Force, David earned his Bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University and his J.D from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 2000.