Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act of 2025

The Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act of 2025 would add a new prohibition to 18 U.S.C. § 4001 aimed at preventing the government from detaining people solely because of a protected characteristic. The bill defines a broad set of protected characteristics (race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability) and allows the Attorney General to add more characteristics in the future. Under the new subsection, no person may be imprisoned or detained based solely on an actual or perceived protected characteristic, and the bill makes clear that nothing in the provision allows the AG to remove any of the already-listed characteristics. The short title given to the measure is the Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act of 2025, signaling an intent to address historical injustices related to civil liberties, including those associated with detention decisions. In short, the bill would curb detention practices that depend only on protected characteristics and would require due process protections to guard against discriminatory detention. It does not, in the text provided, specify penalties or enforcement mechanisms beyond prohibiting such detention, nor does it lay out detailed procedures for how detention decisions must be made. A key feature is the AG’s authority to expand the list of protected characteristics, which could broaden protections but also introduce discretion that lawmakers may scrutinize.