Courts upheld race-based compensation as narrowly tailored redress for discrimination

Evidence

The court gave deference to congressional decision-making here because it had conducted extensive hearings and found that “Japanese Americans were the victims of prejudice, while German Americans were not,” a conclusion that was “amply supported by historical evidence.” The court ruled that Congress “had clear and sufficient reason to compensate interns of Japanese but not German descent; and the compensation is substantially related (as well as narrowly tailored) to Congress’s compelling interest in redressing a shameful example of national discrimination.” The case never reached the US Supreme Court because it declined to hear it. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 241

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the legal precedent and strict-scrutiny language Brown will need for the African American reparations case.
• DEFINE: Gives Brown’s operative standard: compensation must be ‘substantially related and narrowly tailored’ to a ‘compelling interest in redressing’ discrimination.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing whether the ‘narrowly tailored to Japanese descendants’ finding would cut against or for a broader Black reparations claim.