Buck v. Bell

Buck v. Bell
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 22, 1927 Decided May 2, 1927
Full case name	Carrie Buck v. John Hendren Bell, Superintendent of State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded
Citations	274 U.S. 200 (more) 47 S. Ct. 584; 71 L. Ed. 1000; 1927 U.S. LEXIS 20
Prior history	Error to the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia
Holding
The Court upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the unfit "for the protection and health of the state."
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Holmes, joined by Taft, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Sutherland, Sanford, Stone
Dissent	Butler
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenics—the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating "defectives" from the gene pool. The Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell.

The concept of eugenics had been put forward in 1883 by Francis Galton, who also coined the name. The trend first became popular in Europe, but also found proponents in the United States by the start of the 20th century. Indiana passed the first eugenic sterilization statute (1907), but it was legally flawed. To remedy this situation, Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, designed a model eugenic law that was reviewed by legal experts. In 1924 the Commonwealth of Virginia adopted a statute authorizing the compulsory sterilization of the intellectually disabled for the purpose of eugenics. This 1924 statute was closely based on Laughlin's model. Looking to determine if the new law would pass a legal challenge, on September 10, 1924 Dr. Albert Sidney Priddy, superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, filed a petition to his Board of Directors to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old patient at his institution who he claimed had a mental age of 9. Priddy maintained that Buck represented a genetic threat to society. According to Priddy, Buck's 52-year-old mother possessed a mental age of 8 and had a record of prostitution and immorality. She had three children without good knowledge of their parentage. Carrie, one of these children, had been adopted and attended school for five years, reaching the level of sixth grade. However, according to Priddy, she had eventually proved to be "incorrigible" and eventually gave birth to an illegitimate child. Her adopted family had committed her to the State Colony as "feeble-minded", no longer feeling capable of caring for her. It was later discovered that Carrie's pregnancy was not caused by any "immorality" on her own part. In the summer of 1923, while her adoptive mother was away "on account of some illness," her adoptive mother's nephew raped Carrie, and Carrie's later commitment has been seen as an attempt by the family to save their reputation.