North Carolina Gets Closer to Compensation for Eugenics Victims

There are more developments in North Carolina as the state attempts to compensate for the eugenics program that it maintained from 1933 until the 1970’s, in which individuals were ordered to undergo forced sterilization. To date, the Eugenics Compensation Task Force has convened, held hearings, and issued recommendations for payments of $50,000 to victims of the forced sterilizations (see final report here). Now the legislature is weighing in to implement such a payment scheme. A bill, H.B. 947, has now been introduced, noting in its preface that “the General Assembly wishes to make restitution for injustices suffered and unreasonable hardships endured by the asexualization or sterilization of individuals at the direction of the State between 1933 and 1974.” Of the over 7,000 victims in the state, it has been estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 of the victims may still be alive. Under the legislation, the payments would not be subject to taxes nor counted against other government benefits. Hearings on the legislation will be held next week. If the payment scheme is finally approved, it would make North Carolina the first state to provide compensation to the victims of its eugenic sterilization program. All of this occurs, however, against a backdrop of eugenics programs that were adopted by at least 30 states during the early 20th century. In a modern illustration of linking official benefits to reproductive status, Sweden maintains a law requiring transgendered individuals to be sterilized before their gender identity will be recognized by the government; this has been widely opposed but is still the current policy.

N.C. Task Force to Set Compensation for Victims of Eugenics Program

North Carolina is confronting the legacy of the eugenics-inspired compulsory sterilization program it operated from 1929-1974, in which thousands of citizens were deemed to require mandatory sterilization at the order of the state.  Individuals in prisons and mental hospitals were targeted; the N.C. program also allowed social workers to designate individuals for sterilization. Approximately 85% of the victims were female (including rape victims). For background, eugenics (Latin, for good birth) is grounded in the assumption that a genetic basis exists for many characteristics which makes an individual good or bad – thus, the attempt to engage in social genetic engineering by trying to prevent the birth of the unfit (negative eugenics) and to promote the birth of the fit (positive eugenics). In the early 20th century, the U.S. experienced a wave of eugenic fervor that saw its implementation in over 30 state eugenics programs which authorized forced sterilization of “undesirables.”  I recommend a look at the Eugenics Archive at the Dolan Center of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; see, also, for example, the minutes of the N.C. Eugenics Board in 1950. The famous case of Buck v. Bell at the Supreme Court in 1927 presented a constitutional challenge to Virginia’ s program for forced sterilization of the mentally retarded as applied to Carrie Buck, a patient institutionalized in a state mental hospital; her challenge under equal protection and due process failed in one of the Court's most notorious opinions.

The last N.C. compulsory sterilization law was repealed in 2003. Fast forward to 2011. This year, the governor signed an executive order establishing a task force to decide on compensation for the victims of the program. Claimants can file on behalf of themselves or others. Task force hearings have been held, and claimants have testified on the lasting damage they incurred under the program. What remains to be seen is the compensation figure (N.C. is the first state to institute this mechanism of redress for victims); the task force has considered payments between $20,000 and $50,000.  If this is the first state-sponsored compensation scheme, the payments may signal a complicated monetization of fundamental rights, victim status, delay, and shame that sets a precedent, even with an acknowledgement that it is not possible to establish any precise figure for what was lost to these victims. More broadly, the seemingly archaic U.S. eugenics programs of the 20th century remain very socially and legally relevant as modern genetics provides fertile ground for new theories of human fitness and possible misuse by state authorities.