The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has joined 85 organizations in calling on Congress to honor the late Fred Korematsu by passing three bills that recall his legacy. Korematsu challenged all the way to the Supreme Court the Executive Order that authorized the forced relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Honoring Korematsu means rejecting the mass detention of Americans based on their race.
The bills would award Korematsu with the Congressional Gold Metal, establish a national Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution, and would bar imprisonment or detention based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or other “protected characteristic” identified by the Attorney General.