Carrie Buck - Supreme Court Case

Supreme Court Case

The legal challenge was consciously collusive, brought on behalf of the state to test the legality of the statute. John H. Bell, the surgeon who operated on Buck on 19 October, 1927, wrote in his surgical report:

This is the first case operated on under the sterilization law, and the case was carried through the courts of the State and the United States Supreme Court to test the constitutionality of the Virginia act, and an appeal before the Supreme Court for a rehearing recently having been denied.

In an eight to one decision the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 did not violate the U.S. Constitution. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made clear that the challenge was not upon the medical procedure involved but on the process of the substantive law. The court was satisfied that the Virginia Sterilization Act complied with the requirements of due process since sterilization could not occur until a proper hearing had occurred at which the patient and a guardian could be present and the patient had the right to appeal the decision. They also found that since the procedure was limited to people housed in state institutions it did not deny the patient equal protection of the law. And finally, since the Virginia Sterilization Act was not a penal statute, the Court held that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment since it is not intended to be punitive. Citing the best interests of the state, Justice Holmes affirmed the value of a law like Virginia's in order to prevent the nation from being "swamped with incompetence." The Court accepted that Carrie and her mother were promiscuous and that the three generations of Bucks’ shared the genetic trait of feeblemindedness. Thus, it was in the state's best interest to have Carrie Buck sterilized. The decision was seen as a major victory for eugenicists.

Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1927:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Noted Virginia eugenicist Joseph DeJarnette testified against Buck in the original trial.