Mr. Beat presents
Supreme Court Briefs
Madison Heights, Virginia
September 10, 1924
Eugenics doctor Albert Sidney Priddy, the dude in charge of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, requests to sterilize 18-year old patient Carrie Buck.
According to Dr. Priddy, Buck had the mental age of a 9-year old, and argued that if she was allowed to have children, this would be dangerous for society.
So just so we are clear here, he wanted to force her to go through a procedure so that she could never have kids because of her genetics.
Wait, hold up. Let’s go back a bit,
because this story is even more messed up than this.
So Carrie Buck was the daughter of Emma Buck, who previously was taken away by the state from Carrie and her siblings when Carrie was a kid.
Virginia confined Emma to-you guessed it-the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded for prostitution, immorality...oh and having syphilis.
So Carrie grew up with foster parents, who treated her like a slave.
How did Carrie also end up at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded?
Her foster parents sent her there for hopelessly bad behavior, sleeping around, and “feeblemindedness.”
I’m not joking.
Also, they sent her there apparently as a result of being raped by her foster mother’s nephew.
Again, I am not joking.
Since Carrie Buck was declared mentally incompetent to raise her child, her now former foster parents ended up adopting the baby.
At 7 months old, that baby, whose name was Vivian, would also be declared “feeble-minded.”
So anyway, back to Dr. Priddy trying to sterilize Carrie.
He first wanted to make sure it was legal.
I mean, the state had passed a law called the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, which allowed doctors to forcibly sterilize patients who supposedly had genetic traits that would be damaging to society if passed on to the next generation.
However, the law had yet to be tested in the courts.
So the board of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded got it to happen.
After ordering Buck sterilized, the board appointed her a random dude named Robert Shelton to be her guardian.
He was the guardian of several of the institution’s patients and got paid for doing it, by the way.
Buck’s lawyer was a dude named Irving Whitehead, who was a eugenics fan who wanted the sterilization law.
Oh, and apparently he was also on the board, helping request Buck’s sterilization.
In fact, he was good friends with Albert Priddy and Aubrey Strode, who represented Priddy in court.
There’s no conflict of interest there!
Whitehead made no effort to challenge the accusations that Buck was feeble minded, of course.
Shelton appealed the sterilization to the Circuit Court of Amherst County, who agreed the sterilization should take place.
Shelton appealed again to the Supreme Court of Virginia, who also agreed it should take place.
So one more appeal to the Supreme Court, who heard oral arguments on April 22, 1927.
By this time, Priddy had died and his successor, Dr. John Bell, now represented the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.
Buck’s defense argued that she had the right to have kids because it was her right to due process of the law, and that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment also protected that right.
The Court didn’t take too long for this one.
On May 2, 1927, it announced its decision.
It sided with Bell, saying the Virginia Sterilization Act was constitutional.
It was 8-1.
The lone dissenter was Justice Pierce Butler, who did not write an opinion, but him being a devout Catholic may have played a role.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion, saying yes, Buck, as well as her mother and daughter, were indeed “feeble-minded” and “promiscuous,” and it was in Virginia’s interest to get her sterilized.
So, basically, public welfare was more important than the welfare of one person’s body.
A classic “greater good” argument comparing sterilization to forced vaccinations.
In fact, Holmes referenced the case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1904 Supreme Court decision which upheld a Massachusetts law forcing kids going to school to get the smallpox vaccine.
He wrote, “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.”
Holmes now infamously concluded by writing that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Wow, Wendell. Just wow, buddy.
Buck v. Bell further legitimized eugenics laws throughout the United States, and several states added sterilization laws afterward.
In fact, 30 states had some sort of sterilization law, and ultimately around 65,000 Americans were forced to be sterilized, most of them from poor or working class backgrounds, and many sterilized without even knowing it.
At the Nuremberg trials after World War II, Nazi doctors specifically cited Holmes’ opinion in the decision to defend themselves.
It certainly remains one of the most hated Supreme Court decisions ever.
Buck v. Bell was never overturned.
Believe it or not, it still stands, although it was later weakened by the Supreme Court case Skinner v. Oklahoma.
Fast forward 75 years, and Virginia Governor Mark Warner apologized for his state’s participation in eugenics, and later some called for reparations to all the sterilization victims.
So whatever happened to Carrie Buck?
Well on October 19, 1927, a few months after the Supreme Court decision, Dr. John Bell personally performed the operation that prevented her from ever having children again.
She was the very first person in Virginia sterilized under the new law.
In order to make sure the entire family couldn’t reproduce, Carrie’s sister Doris was also later sterilized after she was hospitalized for appendicitis.
Uh, yeah, she was never told about the sterilization.
Doris and her husband attempted for years to have children.
Only in 1980 did she find out why they were unsuccessful.
Carrie’s supposedly feeble-minded daughter, Vivian, later did well in school, even making the honor roll.
However, she unfortunately died from an infection when she was 8 years old.
As it turns out, there was no evidence whatsoever that Carrie Buck was “feeble-minded.”
Most accounts later describe her as having average intelligence.
People who knew her recalled how nice she was to everyone and how much she enjoyed reading books.
She lived a long life. She died in 1983, and was buried in Charlottesville, near her only child, Vivian.
I’ll see you for the next Supreme Court case, jury!
So what about you? Have you ever been called “feebleminded?”
I...haven't surprisingly.
Can you believe how ridiculous this Supreme Court case was? It’s really just so...unbelievable.
Yet it's all true.
It’s certainly up there with the Dred Scott Decision for worst Supreme Court decisions ever.
Say...what do YOU think was the worst Supreme Court decision?
Thanks to my top Patreon supporter Matt Standish for suggesting the case
and thanks for watching and stuff!