On this day, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling that is now widely considered to be one of its worst ever. On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that America’s wartime segregation and internment of Japanese Americans was constitutional. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which essentially ordered all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast to report to internment camps for the duration of the war. Fred Korematsu of San Leandro, California refused to obey this order and appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion, and bizarrely argued that the wartime order had nothing to do with racial prejudice, despite the fact that very few German or Italian Americans had been detained during the war.
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