The N.C. Court of Appeals issued rulings Tuesday in a series of cases related to people who were involuntarily sterilized by the state, ruling that one woman was ineligible for compensation and saying a three-judge Superior Court panel should address whether the families of victims who are no longer alive should be compensated.
The rulings come almost three years after the state adopted a 2013 law to compensate the victims.
Between 1929 and 1974, nearly 7,600 people were sterilized under orders from North Carolina’s Eugenics Board. Nearly 85 percent of those were women or girls, some as young as 10.
The board’s declared goal was to purify the state’s population by weeding out the mentally ill, diseased, feeble-minded and others deemed undesirable.
In a 1950 pamphlet, the Human Betterment League of North Carolina said the board was protecting “the children of future generations and the community at large,” adding that “you wouldn’t expect a moron to run a train or a feebleminded woman to teach school.”
The pamphlet went on: “It is not barnyard castration!”
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