Chinese migrant gets U.S. law licence posthumously

The California Supreme Court decided to posthumously award a law licence to a Chinese immigrant who was barred from becoming the state's legal profession 125 years ago.

Hong Yen Chang was barred from practising law in 1890 by the same court because of his race.

Chang came to the United States in 1872 as part of an educational program to teach Chinese youth about the west. He earned an undergraduate degree from Yale in 1879, and a law degree from Columbia University in New York.

In 1890, the state supreme court found that he would not be eligible for admission to the California bar, based on a provision of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants. After the denial, Chang became a diplomat and banker, and those immigration laws have since been repealed.

A breakthrough came when the California Supreme Court granted an undocumented Mexican migrant a law licence in 2014.

"Even if we cannot undo history, we can acknowledge it and, in so doing, accord a full measure of recognition to Chang's path-breaking efforts to become the first lawyer of Chinese descent in the United States," the court wrote in its decision on Monday.