JLF’s Jon Guze offers background on North Carolina’s eugenics program — a horrific episode in North Carolina history.
Readers who are new to this publication may be shocked to learn that between 1933 when the General Assembly created the state Eugenics Board, and 1977 when the Board was finally disbanded, the State of North Carolina involuntarily sterilized almost 8,000 people, most of them women. At the urging of the John Locke Foundation and others, in 2013, the N.C. General Assembly enacted the Eugenics Asexualization and Sterilization Compensation Program to pay compensation to the “living victims” of the state eugenics program. Some of those victims have already received partial payments. However, because of the way the compensation program was structured, final payments have not been possible.
Read on to find out about a recent N.C. Court of Appeals decision that impacts the compensation effort.
