Hirabayashi v. United States

Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was an American citizen born in Seattle, Washington in 1918. His parents had come to the United States from Japan, but Gordon Hirabayashi himself had never been there. In May of 1942 he was a senior attending the University of Washington in Seattle, and so was living within Military Area No. 1. On 9 May 1942 he broke the military curfew by being away from his home after 8:00 p.m. On 11 and 12 May he defied the exclusion orders when he failed to report to a Civil Control Station to register for evacuation. He took these actions purposefully, maintaining that if he had complied he would be waiving his rights as an American citizen. Hirabayashi later turned himself in and was charged.

At his trial in district court he sought dismissal of the charges because he was an American citizen "who had never been a subject of and had never borne allegiance to the Empire of Japan." In a one-day trial in Seattle, the court overruled this, however, and he was convicted of violating the 21 March Act of Congress. Hirabayashi appealed the conviction, and his case went before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That court certified to the U.S. Supreme Court questions of law, and the Supreme Court directed that the entire record be certified so that the case could be heard there as if it had been brought there by appeal.