## Facts

- After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing military commanders to designate military areas and exclude persons as deemed necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage.
- The Western Defense Command issued Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 requiring all persons of Japanese ancestry to leave a designated military area on the West Coast by a specified date.
- Fred Korematsu, a U.S. citizen of Japanese descent, remained in San Leandro, California (a designated military area) in violation of the exclusion order.
- Korematsu’s loyalty to the United States was not disputed in the proceedings.
- He was arrested and convicted in federal district court under the Act of March 21, 1942, which criminalized violations of such military orders.
- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutional question.

## Issues

1. Whether the exclusion of persons of Japanese ancestry from designated West Coast military areas, pursuant to Executive Order 9066 and congressional authorization, exceeded the war powers of Congress and the President.
2. Whether enforcing the exclusion order against a loyal U.S. citizen based solely on ancestry violated constitutional protections, including due process under the Fifth Amendment.
3. Whether courts should defer to military judgments of wartime necessity when the government action rests on a racial classification.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed Korematsu’s conviction in a 6–3 decision.
- The Court held Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 constitutional as of the time it was issued and violated.
- The majority stated that legal restrictions curtailing the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect and require the most rigid scrutiny, but concluded that pressing public necessity can justify such restrictions.
- The Court accepted the government’s claim of military necessity and held the exclusion a permissible exercise of the combined war powers of Congress and the Executive.
- The Court treated the case as addressing only an exclusion order, not the legality of subsequent detention in relocation centers.
- Dissents argued the policy punished a citizen for refusing confinement based solely on ancestry without individualized inquiry, condemned the decision as racial discrimination, and warned it would operate as dangerous precedent for future abuses.

## Legal Principles

- Racial classifications imposed by government action are immediately suspect and subject to the most rigid scrutiny.
- Pressing public necessity may justify otherwise suspect race-based restrictions; racial antagonism cannot.
- In wartime, courts may give substantial deference to military and political judgments when measures are claimed to be necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage and are backed by congressional authorization.
- A court may limit its analysis to the specific order challenged (exclusion) rather than treating broader downstream policies (detention) as necessarily before it.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Korematsu’s conviction and sustained a race-based wartime exclusion order as within federal war powers, applying formally heightened scrutiny but deferring to asserted military necessity, while three dissents condemned the result as unconstitutional racial discrimination and warned of its precedential danger.


Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)