Skinner v. Oklahoma and WWII
World War II and Nazi Eugenics
The Germans“Since 1907 sterilization laws have been passed in 29 States of the United States of America. Those affected by the law were primarily criminals, feeble-minded, insane, epileptics, alcoholic and narcotic addicts, as well as prostitutes. Although almost all states try to carry out sterilization on a voluntary basis the courts have more than once ordered compulsory sterilizations. In a judgment of the Supreme Court of October 1926 it says, among other things: ‘It is better for everybody if society, instead of waiting until it has to execute degenerate offspring or leave them to starve because of feeble-mindedness can prevent obviously inferior individuals from propagating their kind. The principle justifying compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover the severing of the Fallopian tubes.’”
- Nazi defense, Nuremberg trials “Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.” - Adolf Hitler "A prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over the period of only six hundred years, would not only free humanity from an immeasurable misfortune, but would lead to a recovery which today seems scarcely conceivable." - Adolf Hitler |
The Americans"[Germany is] proceeding toward a policy that will accord with the best thoughts of eugenists in all civilized countries.”
- Paul Popenoe, "Journal of Heredity" (1934) “The Germans are beating us at our own game.” - Joseph DeJarnette “Sterilization…is our greatest work.” - Joseph DeJarnette "[There exists] a common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics.” - Harry Laughlin |
Professor Paul A. Lombardo on Nazi eugenics (2013)
The advent of WWII, and German reliance on American eugenics as justification for Nazi atrocities, discredited eugenics to the general public and caused many people and institutions that formerly supported it to abandon the science as a lost cause. But the dislodging of eugenics from the legal sphere occurred in 1942, with a Supreme Court case called Skinner v. Oklahoma.
Skinner v. Oklahoma
The Case
“A lot of criminals will be kept out, or run out, of Oklahoma.” - Jesse Ballard, assistant to the attorney general of Oklahoma
“Oh, you who wish to confiscate
My powers of reproduction -- And wish to trifle with my fate Without the least compunction: I’d like to tell you, here and now To where I’d relegate you, Why I denounce you filthy quacks; |
Is not for my elation,
But just a third time loser’s hope Lived in imagination -- I’d like to think that some near date Will satisfy my craving To get my hands upon you fiends Who started all this raving.” |
- Anonymous prisoner at McAlester Prison, circa 1934
“He breeds criminals; the taint is in the blood, and there is no royal touch which can expel it.” - Robert Fletcher, President of the Anthropological Society of Washington
"At the time the case began, in the 1930s, Oklahoma was dusty, hot, and poor. It was the Depression and many people were out of work. By the end of the case, when it reached the Supreme Court, the country was at war with Germany. Skinner's case was pushed by a home-schooled lawyer/legislator hired by the prisoners themselves, when groups like the ACLU, and famous men, like Clarence Darrow, refused to help."
- Professor Victoria Nourse interviewed through email
Jack Skinner was fifteen when he was first convicted of stealing chickens. He was later convicted twice more, and ended up in McAlester Prison, in Oklahoma, where a new sterilization law was recently passed. Skinner was selected for sterilization, and with a group of other prisoners at McAlester chose to fight the order. The men of McAlester Prison took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where 15 years before the only precedent in cases of eugenic sterilization, Buck v. Bell, had been decided.
"At the time the case began, in the 1930s, Oklahoma was dusty, hot, and poor. It was the Depression and many people were out of work. By the end of the case, when it reached the Supreme Court, the country was at war with Germany. Skinner's case was pushed by a home-schooled lawyer/legislator hired by the prisoners themselves, when groups like the ACLU, and famous men, like Clarence Darrow, refused to help."
- Professor Victoria Nourse interviewed through email
Jack Skinner was fifteen when he was first convicted of stealing chickens. He was later convicted twice more, and ended up in McAlester Prison, in Oklahoma, where a new sterilization law was recently passed. Skinner was selected for sterilization, and with a group of other prisoners at McAlester chose to fight the order. The men of McAlester Prison took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where 15 years before the only precedent in cases of eugenic sterilization, Buck v. Bell, had been decided.
The Ruling
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, far-reaching 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. (Douglas opinion).
We advert to them merely in emphasis of our view that strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws. (Douglas opinion).
There are limits to the extent to which a legislatively represented majority may conduct biological experiments at the expense of the dignity and personality and natural powers of a minority -- even those who have been guilty of what the majority define as crimes. (Jackson opinion).
This Court has sustained such an experiment with respect to an imbecile, a person with definite and observable characteristics, where the condition had persisted through three generations and afforded grounds for the belief that it was transmissible, and would continue to manifest itself in generations to come. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200. (Jackson opinion).
Undoubtedly, a state may, after appropriate inquiry, constitutionally interfere with the personal liberty of the individual to prevent the transmission by inheritance of his socially injurious tendencies. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200. (Stone opinion).
The court ruled for Skinner, striking down the Oklahoma statute and providing a legal precedent in eugenic sterilization to counter Buck v. Bell, preventing the passage of further sterilization laws and setting an example that future Supreme Court cases involving reproductive rights could follow.
We advert to them merely in emphasis of our view that strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws. (Douglas opinion).
There are limits to the extent to which a legislatively represented majority may conduct biological experiments at the expense of the dignity and personality and natural powers of a minority -- even those who have been guilty of what the majority define as crimes. (Jackson opinion).
This Court has sustained such an experiment with respect to an imbecile, a person with definite and observable characteristics, where the condition had persisted through three generations and afforded grounds for the belief that it was transmissible, and would continue to manifest itself in generations to come. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200. (Jackson opinion).
Undoubtedly, a state may, after appropriate inquiry, constitutionally interfere with the personal liberty of the individual to prevent the transmission by inheritance of his socially injurious tendencies. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200. (Stone opinion).
The court ruled for Skinner, striking down the Oklahoma statute and providing a legal precedent in eugenic sterilization to counter Buck v. Bell, preventing the passage of further sterilization laws and setting an example that future Supreme Court cases involving reproductive rights could follow.
Significance
Professor Paul A. Lombardo on the significance of the Skinner v. Oklahoma court case (2013)
“Lawyers, with rare exceptions, have failed to lay bare that the law of the Supreme Court is enmeshed in the country’s history; historians no less have seemed to miss the fact that the country’s history is enmeshed in the law of the Supreme Court.” - Felix Frankfurter
“Skinner served as an important precedent for Griswold and Roe, even though Skinner's equality rationale did not ultimately prevail in those cases. It serves as a lesson that state interference in matters of reproduction raises serious questions. Skinner removed the State's imprimatur from eugenics. It served to limit the reach of eugenic laws, although it did not alone yield change.” - Victoria Nourse, interviewed through email
Buck v. Bell served as the license for later eugenic sterilization statutes, and for the acceptance of neo-eugenic thinking that pervades America today. The first mention of procreation as a fundamental right and the idea that strict scrutiny must be applied to preserve that right appeared in Skinner v. Oklahoma, while WWII demonized eugenics in the popular imagination, although sterilization in various forms continued into the 1970s.