Do Politicians Ethnically Discriminate Against Hispanics? Evidence from a Field Experiment with State Legislative Offices

Legislatures are meant to represent the populace but are also racialized institutions capable of perpetuating structural disadvantages against vulnerable populations. It is necessary to periodically test if vulnerable populations are provided with equal access to legislative services. In this manuscript I test for potential ethnic discrimination against Hispanics in US state legislatures. A problem with prior studies is that Hispanicity signals both an ethnic outgroup and non-citizen stat. I overcome this challenge by comparing migrant Hispanics with migrant whites. I find that Hispanics and whites receive similar constituency service, as measured by reply rate and reply content, but I find that legislators are less likely to acquire information about Hispanic constituents. I advance the existing Hispanic literature by providing a clean comparison between Hispanics and whites with similar nativity backgrounds. I advance the study of discrimination by showcasing best practices for future studies of discrimination.