Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1943

Hirabayashi v. United States

320 U.S. 81 | 63 S. Ct. 1375 | 87 L. Ed. 1774 | 1943 U.S. LEXIS 1109

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Takeaway

In short, the Court upheld an ancestry-based wartime curfew by deferring to the government’s asserted emergency judgment, while leaving the separate exclusion order undecided.

Background

Gordon Hirabayashi was a U.S. citizen born in Seattle to Japanese parents. During World War II, a military commander imposed an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew on everyone of Japanese ancestry in a designated West Coast military area. The curfew followed President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, and Congress made knowing violations of restrictions in such areas a crime.

Hirabayashi knowingly violated the curfew and also failed to report to a station as directed before his exclusion from the area. A federal district court convicted him on both counts and imposed concurrent three-month sentences. The Ninth Circuit certified questions to the Supreme Court, which took the full record. Because the curfew conviction alone sustained the sentence, the Court did not decide the validity of the reporting requirement or exclusion order.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether imposing a wartime curfew on citizens of Japanese ancestry, but not other citizens, violated the Fifth Amendment.

Holding

No. The Court held that the curfew, as applied in the circumstances of 1942, did not violate Fifth Amendment due process.

Reasoning

The Court called ancestry-based distinctions odious and recognized that severe discrimination can violate Fifth Amendment due process. It nevertheless asked whether the wartime circumstances gave Congress and the military a reasonable basis for this particular restriction.

The Court emphasized the perceived threat of invasion, espionage, and sabotage on the Pacific Coast, where important military facilities were located. It accepted the judgment that potentially disloyal people within the Japanese American population could not quickly be identified and addressed individually.

On that view, the Court found a rational basis for treating people of Japanese ancestry differently during the emergency. It considered a nighttime curfew a protective measure against sabotage and declined to substitute its judgment for that of the branches responsible for conducting the war. The holding concerned the curfew at the time it was imposed, not the separate exclusion order.

Issue #2

Whether Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power by allowing a military commander to impose a curfew enforceable through criminal penalties.

Holding

No. The curfew was issued under a wartime policy approved by Congress, not an unlawful delegation of legislative power.

Reasoning

Congress enacted the criminal statute knowing that Executive Order 9066 contemplated restrictions including curfews, and that the military contemplated applying them to citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Court treated the statute as Congress’s adoption of the executive order and its protective purpose.

That purpose—guarding war resources against espionage and sabotage—supplied the policy for the commander’s action. The commander made findings of danger and imposed a curfew the Court deemed reasonably related to meeting it. Congress could leave those wartime factual judgments and the choice of an appropriate measure to military officials.

Concurrences

Justice Douglas

Reasoning

Douglas stressed that the decision permitted temporary group-based action in an emergency, not a judgment that ancestry determines loyalty. He left open whether an individual must later have a way to establish loyalty and obtain relief.

Justice Murphy

Reasoning

Murphy viewed the racial restriction as reaching the brink of constitutional power. He accepted it only because of the immediate military danger and emphasized that wartime necessity does not suspend constitutional limits.

Justice Rutledge

Reasoning

Rutledge cautioned that deference to military judgment must not mean courts can never review restrictions a commander places on civilians.