Ex parte Endo

Ex parte Endo
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 12, 1944 Decided December 18, 1944
Full case name	Ex parte Mitsuye Endo
Citations	323U.S.283(more) 65 S. Ct. 208; 89L. Ed.243; 1944U.S. LEXIS1
Holding
The government cannot detain a citizen without charge when the government itself concedes she is loyal to the United States.
Court membership
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone Associate Justices Owen Roberts·Hugo Black Stanley F. Reed·Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas·Frank Murphy Robert H. Jackson·Wiley B. Rutledge
Case opinions
Majority	Douglas, joined byunanimous
Concurrence	Murphy
Concurrence	Roberts

Ex parte Mitsuye Endo,323 U.S. 283 (1944), was aUnited States Supreme Courtex partedecision handed down on December 18, 1944, in which the Court unanimously ruled that the U.S. government could not continue todetainacitizenwho was "concededly loyal" to the United States.Although the Court did not touch on the constitutionality of the exclusion of people of Japanese ancestry from theWest Coast,which it had found not to violate citizens' rights in theKorematsu v. United Statesdecision on the same date, theEndoruling nonetheless led to the reopening of the West Coast toJapanese Americansaftertheir incarcerationin camps across the U.S. interior duringWorld War II.

The Court also found as part of this decision that ifCongressis found to have ratified byappropriationany part of an executive agency program, the bill doing so must include a specific item referring to that portion of the program.

Background

The plaintiff in the case,Mitsuye Endo,had worked as a clerk for the California Department of Motor Vehicles inSacramentobeforeWorld War II.After theattack on Pearl Harborhad soured publicsentiment toward Japanese Americans,Endo and otherNiseistate employees were harassed and eventually fired because of theirJapanese ancestry.Civil rights attorney and president of theJapanese American Citizens League(JACL), Saburo Kido, working with San Francisco attorney James Purcell, began a legal campaign to assist these workers, but the mass removal authorized byExecutive Order 9066complicated their case. Endo was selected as a test case to file a writ ofhabeas corpusbecause of her profile as an Americanized, "assimilated" Nisei. She was a practicing Christian, had never been toJapan,spoke onlyEnglishand noJapanese,and had a brother in the US Army.

On July 13, 1942, Purcell filed thehabeas corpuspetition for Endo's release from theTule Lakecamp, where she and her family were being held. JudgeMichael J. Rocheheard Endo's case in July 1942 but did not issue a ruling until July 1943, when he denied her petition without explanation. An appeal was perfected to theNinth Circuit Court of Appealsin August 1943, and in April 1944, JudgeWilliam Denmansent the case to the Supreme Court, rather than issuing a ruling himself.By then, Endo had been transferred toTopaz,Utah—Tule Lake having been converted to a segregated detention center for"disloyal"Japanese American inmates.

In an effort to halt her case, theWar Relocation Authorityhad offered to release her if she agreed not to return to the West Coast, but Endo refused and so remained in confinement.

Endo,Korematsu,and end of internment

The unanimous opinion ruling in Endo's favor was written by JusticeWilliam O. Douglas,with JusticesFrank MurphyandOwen Robertsconcurring. It stopped short of addressing the question of the government's right to exclude citizens based on military necessity but instead focused on the actions of the WRA: "In reaching that conclusion [that Endo should be freed] we do not come to the underlying constitutional issues which have been argued.... [W]e conclude that, whatever power the War Relocation Authority may have to detain other classes of citizens, it has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure."

Because of that avoidance, it is very difficult to reconcileEndowithKorematsu,which was decided the same day. As Justice Roberts pointed out in hisKorematsudissent, distinguishing the cases required a reliance on thelegal fictionthatKorematsudealt with only the exclusion of Japanese Americans, not their detention, and thatFred Korematsucould have gone anywhere else in the United States, when in reality he would have been subject to the detainment found illegal inEndo.In short,Endodetermined that a citizen could not be imprisoned if the government was unable to prove disloyalty, butKorematsuallowed the government a loophole to punish that citizen criminally for refusing to be illegally imprisoned.Roberts also criticized the Court's majority for blaming the Army and failing to hold the president accountable. The executive branch, he pointed out, “not only was aware of what was being done but in fact that which was done was formulated in regulations and in a so-called handbook open to the public.” He called it “inadmissible to suggest that some inferior public servant exceeded the authority granted by executive order in this case."

TheRoosevelt administration,having been alerted to the Court's decision, issued Public Proclamation No. 21 the day before theEndoandKorematsurulings were made public, on December 17, 1944. It rescinded the exclusion orders and declared that Japanese Americans could begin returning to the West Coast in January 1945.

See also

• Hirabayashi v. United States
• Yasui v. United States
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 323

External links

• Works related toEx parte Endoat Wikisource
• Text ofEx parte Endo,323U.S.283 (1944) is available from:CourtListenerFindlawGoogle ScholarJustiaLibrary of Congress