Ex parte Endo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ex parte Endo

Argued October 12, 1944
Decided December 18, 1944

Full case name:	Ex parte Mitsuye Endo

Citations:	323 U.S. 283

Holding

The government cannot detain a citizen that the government itself concedes is loyal to the United States.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Harlan Fiske Stone
Associate Justices: Owen Josephus Roberts, Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, Robert H. Jackson, Wiley Blount Rutledge

Case opinions

Majority by: Douglas
Joined by: unanimous court
Concurrence by: Murphy
Concurrence by: Roberts

Ex parte Endo, or Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944),^[1] was a United States Supreme Court decision, handed down on December 18, 1944, the same day as their decision in Korematsu v. United States. In their decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, regardless of whether the United States Government had the right to exclude people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during World War II, they could not continue to detain a citizen that the government itself conceded was loyal to the United States. This decision helped lead to the re-opening of the West Coast for resettlement by Japanese-American citizens following their internment in camps across the United States during World War II.

Mitsuye Endo, the plaintiff in the case, was evacuated from Sacramento, California, in 1942, pursuant to Executive Order 9066 and was removed to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center located in Modoc County, California. In July, 1942, she filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, asking that she be discharged and restored to liberty. That petition was denied by the District Court in July, 1943, and an appeal was prefected to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in August, 1943.

The court also found as part of this decision that if Congress is found to have ratified by appropriation any part of an executive agency program, the bill doing so must include a specific item referring to that portion of the program.

The unanimous opinion was written by William O. Douglas, with Frank Murphy and Owen Roberts concurring.