In re Admin. Order 2017-05-17

By the Court: Before this court is a motion from the Little Tokyo Historical Society and the Japanese American Bar Association seeking admission to the State Bar of California for Sei Fujii, a Californian who died in 1954. Fujii was born in Japan and immigrated to the United States in 1903. Eight years later, he graduated with a law degree from the University of Southern California. The materials before us contain no indication that Fujii took or passed a bar exam or that he applied for admission to the California bar. But such acts by Fujii would have been futile in light of our decision in In re Hong Yen Chang (1890) 84 Cal. 163, 24 P. 156. Federal law at the time limited naturalization solely to " 'free white persons' " and "persons of African descent." (Ozawa v. United States (1922) 260 U.S. 178, 180, 43 S.Ct. 65, 67 L.Ed. 199.) At the same time, California and most other states prohibited foreign-born persons from practicing law unless they were eligible for citizenship. (Raffaelli v. Committee of Bar Examiners (1972) 7 Cal.3d 288, 291, 101 Cal.Rptr. 896, 496 P.2d 1264.) This court upheld that restriction in In re Hong Yen Chang and later suggested that noncitizens were too untrustworthy to practice law. (Large v. The State Bar (1933) 218 Cal. 334, 335, 23 P.2d 288 [" 'it is difficult to conceive how a professional advocate, owing foreign allegiance and cherishing alien prejudices, can usefully vindicate principles in the abhorrence of which he may have been nurtured; how, on many important occasions, the most brilliant forensic talents can be successfully exerted, unless they are sustained and inspired by an ardent patriotism' "].) This pair of interlocking federal and state restrictions-each "the lingering vestige of a xenophobic attitude" (Raffaelli , at p. 291, 101 Cal.Rptr. 896, 496 P.2d 1264 )-combined to form an insurmountable barrier against persons born in Asia who wished to practice law in California. Once federal law changed in 1952 to remove race requirements for naturalization, Fujii became a citizen, at age 73. He died of a heart attack just 51 days later.

Though Fujii both graduated from law school and made his career in California, throughout his entire professional life he was barred from obtaining a license to practice law in the state. This was an injustice that we repudiate today by granting Fujii honorary posthumous membership in the State Bar of California.

Despite his unjust exclusion from the legal profession, Fujii undertook extraordinary efforts to apply his education and talents to advancing the rule of law in California. Fujii partnered with a classmate from his law school to assert the rights of Japanese immigrants in the Los Angeles area. The pair's accomplishments included an early challenge to the Alien Land Law of 1913. That California statute, enacted two years after Fujii finished law school, barred aliens who were "ineligible for citizenship" from owning land in the state. Though the legislation did not single out any particular ethnic group, this court recognized early on that the "object sought to be attained by these statutory provisions" was "to discourage the coming of Japanese into this state." (