Buck v. Bell legalizes forced sterilization

In Buck v. Bell (1927), the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that states could forcibly sterilize people judged "feebleminded" or "unfit," with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declaring "three generations of imbeciles are enough." The decision gave constitutional cover to the American eugenics movement, and over the following decades tens of thousands of people were sterilized — disproportionately poor, disabled, and Black. The ruling has never been formally overturned. It is the legal root of the coerced-sterilization campaigns that targeted Black women into the 1970s.