Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 was a World War II-era U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court held that excluding all persons of Japanese ancestry from designated military areas was constitutional. The Supreme Court was of the opinion that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect and must be rigidly scrutinized, though not all of them are necessarily unconstitutional. However, it was noted that compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direct emergency and peril, is inconsistent with the US’s basic governmental institutions.
See also: Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943)
[Last updated in February of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]