March 1983
William Hohri (chair of the National Council of Japanese American Redress) files a lawsuit on behalf of 25 Japanese Americans for various violations, and sues for $27 billion.
The National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR) was a competing group which had decided that the path to redress should be pursued through the courts. William Hori, a Nisei from Chicago, split from the JACL approach and filed a class action suit on behalf of 25 Japanese American plaintiffs. Hohri et al v. United States was filed on March 1983 after the CWRIC issued its findings. After some successes and loses at the U.S. District Court of Columbia and at the Appellate level, the Supreme Court heard the case on April 20, 1987. The Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled in June 1987 in favor of the jurisdictional argument of "sovereign immunity" presented by Department of Justice. The Court remanded the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The case was dismissed by a 2 to 1 vote, affirming the previous 1984 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (The doctrine of "sovereign immunity" essentially means that one cannot sue the government without the government's consent.)
