four U.S. Supreme Courtroom Instances The place Asian Individuals Fought For Civil Rights : NPR

Court decisions can change the course of history. And while the myth of the “exemplary minority” often characterizes Asians living in the United States as hardworking, successful, and cooperative citizens, many historically had to fight unfair laws to be recognized as full Americans. From landownership issues to immigration, here are four cases of Asian Americans battling injustice in court.

Chy Lung v. Freeman

California law passed in 1875 empowered state immigration officials to inspect people entering the state and weed out those deemed “indecent and debilitated.” These people would be refused entry into the United States unless the captain of the ship transporting them had paid bail for them.

Chy Lung was one of 22 women arrested on board a ship from China in 1875. The women were refused entry because they had entered the country without their husbands or children.

Chy Lung questioned the constitutionality of the law, and the Supreme Court ruled in her favor that the federal government had the power to set immigration laws.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Law, which banned Chinese workers from immigrating to the United States for ten years. It was extended for another 10 years by the Geary Act and became final in 1902. It was not lifted until 1943.

Wong Kim Ark was born in the United States in 1873 to Chinese parents who were legal residents of San Francisco. He visited China at the age of 21 and was refused entry to the United States on his return due to the Chinese law of exclusion. In his 1897 In the Supreme Court case, Wong argued that he was a US citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment which stated that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States under their jurisdiction are citizens of the United States and the state in which they live. ” “”

The court ruled in Wong’s favor by setting the parameters for jus soli and ensuring the citizenship of US-born children for non-citizenship parents. The concept is popularly known as birthright citizenship.

Left: Wong Kim Ark, in a photo from a 1904 US immigration document. Right: Sergeant Bhagat Singh Thind in US Army uniform during World War I at Camp Lewis, Washington, in 1918. Thind, an American Sikh, was the first US soldier who was religiously permitted to wear a turban as part of his military uniform.

National Archives / public domain; United States Army

Ozawa versus United States

The 1790 Naturalization Act established the first rules for US citizenship. The law restricted citizenship to “any foreigner who is a free white person” who had lived “within the boundaries and under the jurisdiction of the United States for two years” and who could demonstrate that he was a “person of good standing.” Character “was.

Takao Ozawa was a Japanese immigrant who questioned the definition of a “free white person” after applying for citizenship in Hawaii in 1914. He was rejected because he was ineligible because he was Japanese.

The Supreme Court ruled against Ozawa in 1922. Judge George Sutherland gave the statement. He argued against it, to define who is white only by the “bare skin color”, since the skin tone itself varied too much “among people of the same race”. Sutherland wrote that “the mere use of the color test would lead to a confused racial overlap and a gradual amalgamation of one into the other, with no practical dividing line.” He argued that people who are considered “white” “should be restricted to those of the Caucasian race”.

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

In 1923, Justice Sutherland contradicted his own opinion in the Ozawa v. United States case against Bhahat Singh Thind.

Thind, a Sikh immigrant from India, applied for and was granted citizenship in the state of Oregon. However, a naturalization examiner appealed a ruling by the Oregon District Court in favor of Thind’s motion because he was ignorant.

In his case before the Supreme Court, Thind argued that he was “from high-caste Hindu tribes born in Punjab, one of the extreme northwestern districts of India, and classified as Caucasian or Aryan by certain scientific authorities.”

The court ruled against Thind, with Sutherland writing that the term “free white persons” should only be considered “synonymous with the word” caucasian “just because the word is popularly understood”. The court ruled, in essence, that in addition to being of Caucasian descent, individuals must be white in skin tone to be eligible for citizenship.

It wasn’t until the Immigration Act of 1952 that naturalization became a color-blind process and Asian immigrants could become US citizens.