Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352 (1991), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that a prosecutor may dismiss jurors who are bilingual in Spanish and English from juries that will consider Spanish-language testimony.

[2] He appealed his conviction, claiming that under the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision under Batson v. Kentucky,[3] the prosecutor unconstitutionally used peremptory strikes against jury panel members who had Hispanic last names.

[4] However, the appellate court found the prosecutor has a nondiscriminatory reason for the challenge because the stricken jurors either had a relative prosecuted by the district attorney's office or spoke Spanish and may not accept the translated testimony as final.

[7] The majority noted that the trial judge was present during the entirety of the questioning and was satisfied with the prosecutor's actions as the stricken jurors' body-language signaled doubt.

[8] On the merits, Kaye believed too much deference was provided to the trial court's decision and was concerned that while the prosecutor expressed an interest in removing Spanish-speakers because of the interpreter there was no indication that any non-Latino jurors were asked if they spoke Spanish as well.

The Court was concerned with line drawing issues of potential multiple dialects or languages for a given foreign country and if a prosecutor could ever use a peremptory strike against a bilingual juror.

[16] Even though Hernandez did not make a prima facie showing before the prosecutor presented a race-neutral reasoning, the Court found this did not impact the analysis because it rested with the trial judge's determination.

The Court side-stepped Hernandez's argument on the correlation between Spanish-speaking ability and ethnicity because of the additional factors the prosecutor articulated in his reasoning for striking the two Latino jurors.

[18] The trial court's decision is afforded a high level of deference under Batson, and the Court assumed that the trial judge took into account the case-specific factors in making the decision to accept the prosecutor's justification: the high concentration of Spanish speakers in the local population, Spanish as the predominant language for many in that region, the ethnic backgrounds of the parties and witnesses, and the prosecutor's swift justification.

[21] After outlining the Court's jurisprudence under Batson and Washington v. Davis, O'Connor limited the Equal Protection Clause analysis for racial discrimination to race only.

Professor Juan Perea argued that the interconnection between race and language is not properly addressed and that the Supreme Court should have found the prosecutor's peremptory strikes not race-neutral.

[34] Five years later, the Supreme Court cited to Hernandez v. New York as outlining the Batson steps and what met the "legitimate reason" standard for a prosecutor to strike a juror.

[38] The Third Circuit did outline that Latino jurors could not be struck because of the theoretical use of Spanish and placed a greater burden on trial judges to be "sensitive to the potential use of language-based peremptories for discriminatory purposes.