Korematsu v. United States

The Executive Order 9066 was passed by President Roosevelt in 1942, creating designated military areas which were "legally" off limits to residents of Japanese descent. This order required the relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese people to one of 26 detention/internment camps usually located in remote locations. This essentially allowed the "legalization of racism," which many believed was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

One Japanese-American citizen, Fred Korematsu, believed that his forced relocation was unconstitutional, so he planned to stay behind and to pretend to be of Spanish-Hawaiian descent by getting plastic surgery to alter his appearance. He was arrested by the FBI after failing to report to a relocation center, and he decided to make his case "a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the government's order." He was convicted of violating military orders issued under Executive Order 9066 in a federal court in San Francisco, but he decided to appeal the decision to the US Court of Appeals. On December 18, 1944, he pleaded his case in the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States but walked away with a 6-3 decision that the detention was a "military necessity" rather than an act of racial discrimination. This was due to a piece of evidence, the Final Report, which was a paper that accused many people of Japanese descent of aiding the Japanese against the US. It was found to be composed mainly of fictional statistics, but a last-minute change to the case allowed it to be used as evidence against Korematsu.

Nearly 40 years after the decision, the case was reopened with new evidence on the basis of government misconduct. They had evidence proving that the government's legal team had "intentionally suppressed or destroyed evidence" reporting that Japanese Americans had posed no military threat to the US. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu's conviction was overturned. However, the Supreme Court decision still stands today, as they believed that there was sufficient danger and a sufficient relationship between the forced relocation of Japanese citizens and the prevention of the danger they posed to American society.

That's not to say that there weren't any dissenting opinions against the decision, especially in the Supreme Court itself. Justice Owen J. Roberts wrote that "it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States."  Justice Frank Murphy continued, "Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life... it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States."

The case brought up a specific, yet divisive question: When is it absolutely necessary to value the safety of our country over the people's constitutional rights? The Court reasoned that in times of war, the government should prioritize the safety of its people over protecting their rights, that it's necessary to pass unconstitutional laws for the sake of preserving the security of the majority. As Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, "If Congress in peace-time legislation should enact such a criminal law, I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it."

Sources:
http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/facts-and-case-summary-korematsu-v-us
http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/power-fiery-dissents-korematsu-v-us