Yasui v. United States

Background

An American-born man of Japanese ancestry was indicted for breaking a curfew in Portland, Oregon that took effect after a military proclamation on March 24, 1942. He was born in Oregon in 1916, spent a childhood summer in Japan, attended public schools and a Japanese language school, earned college and law degrees, served as a reserve Army officer, and had worked for the Japanese consulate before resigning on December 8, 1941 and offering his services to the U.S. military. He deliberately violated the curfew and asked to be arrested to test the rule’s constitutionality.

Reasoning

The Court considered whether the military curfew could lawfully apply to citizens. Following its companion decision, the Court held that the curfew was valid as applied to citizens and therefore sustained the conviction for violating it. The district court had earlier found the defendant had renounced his citizenship, but the Government did not press that claim at trial, so the Court treated the citizenship question as unnecessary to supporting the curfew conviction.

Real world impact

The practical result is that the curfew conviction stands and the government’s wartime curfew power was upheld in this case. Because the district court imposed the maximum sentence after finding the defendant not to be a citizen, the Supreme Court vacated that sentence, instructed the lower court to strike the citizenship finding, and remanded the case for resentencing without relying on the erroneous citizenship determination.