Because the first time the Supreme Court articulated strict scrutiny review was in the 1944 case Korematsu v. United States—the World War II Japanese internment case. The Court ruled that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066—which provided for the forced “relocation” of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast—should be reviewed under strict scrutiny, but concluded that the government passed the strict scrutiny test because of the government’s national security interest.
