Decision: Skinner v. State of Oklahoma (1942)
Sterilization, Eugenics, and Privacy
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Are acts of marriage and procreation fundamental rights of all people, even though the Constitution does not specifically list them as such? Or can the government forcibly sterilize those it doesn't want to breed in order to prevent more of them from appearing in the future - criminals, the insane, the retarded, minority races, etc?
Background Information
Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act, which defined a "habitual criminal" as a person convicted two or more times for "felonies involving moral turpitude" in any court of law, provided for the sexual sterilization of such a person upon the completion of a proceeding instituted by the Attorney General. After a trial, if the person is indeed found to be a habitual criminal, they would be sterilized.
In 1936, the Attorney General started proceedings against someone who challenged the Act as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court Decision
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court found on June 1, 1942, that the Oklahoma law providing for involuntary sterilization violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The State argued that they were attempting to prevent "criminal traits" from being passed down through the generations, but the Court rejected this argument:
Science has found and the law has recognized that there are certain types of mental deficiency associated with delinquency which are inheritable. But the State does not contend - nor can there be any pretense - that either common knowledge or experience, or scientific investigation, has given assurance that the criminal tendencies of any class of habitual offenders are universally or even generally inheritable. In such circumstances, inquiry whether such is the fact in the case of any particular individual cannot rightly be dispensed with.
Although the fact that the law was applied in an arbitrary manner was factored into the decision, the Court also based its finding on the fact that procreation was a fundamental right which belonged to all citizens. As such, the government had a high burden of proof before it could reasonably argue that it could deprive someone of it:
But the instant legislation runs afoul of the equal protection clause, though we give Oklahoma that large deference which the rule of the foregoing cases requires. We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, farreaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty.
Significance
In this decision, the Supreme Court held that the acts of marriage and procreation were fundamental rights of all people, even though the Constitution does not specifically list them as such. Thus, a private sphere of conduct between individuals was being recognized.
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