Board of Directors

Norma Cantú

Board Chair

Professor of Law and Education
University of Texas at Austin
UT School of Law

Professor Norma V. Cantú walked into the Cameron County, Texas, courthouse when she was nine years old, looking for a sip of water. Appreciating the air-conditioning and surroundings, the fourth-grader decided she would pursue a law career. To this end, she earned a summa cum laude degree from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and took the LSAT. She enrolled at Harvard Law School at age 19 and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree at 22. Her early career took her through a stint as a state investigator of the abuse and neglect of elders in long-term health care facilities and as a teacher of eighth-graders. She found her niche at MALDEF, where she devoted herself to civil rights cases for 14 years. Licensed by the State Bars of Texas and California, she was lead or co-lead counsel for MALDEF in cases alleging discrimination based on color, national origin, ethnicity, low-income status, language, geography, and gender. She represented Hispanics and non-Hispanics in gaining legal access to fair and equitable treatment.

In 1983, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education (DoED). Buoyed by a unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate, she directed and coached a staff of over 800 investigators and lawyers. She is proud that the agency issued policy on Title VI, the Americans with Disability Act, Section 504, and Title IX, while setting records for resolutions in complaints filed. In 2001, after setting a record at DoED as the longest-serving civil rights Assistant Secretary, Norma V. Cantú returned to Texas and joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. She designed the first disability law class at the UT School of Law, drawing inspiration from the late Judith Heumann and Justin Dart. During her leadership as a department chair, the two departments in which she served reached national attention for being among the best educational departments in college rankings.

In 2020, President-Elect Joe Biden named Prof. Cantú to the Transition Team for the U.S. Department of Education. In 2021, President Biden appointed Cantú as the first Hispanic female to chair the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding federal commission established in 1957. She served on the commission for two years during which she participated in investigations and reports to Congress on the racial inequities in federal responses to hurricanes in Texas and Puerto Rico, as well as hate crimes against people of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent in the U.S. Recently, Prof. Cantú retired from teaching at UT Austin. On April 27, 2024, she was unanimously elected Chair of the MALDEF Board.