OK's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act says that the state can sterilize people who are convicted 3 times of felonies involving moral turpitude.
D was convicted of stealing chickens once and robbery with firearms twice. The state wanted to sterilize him.
D obviously objected.
Procedural History
Trial court found D could be sterilized.
Supreme Court of OK affirmed.
SCOTUS reversed, found law unconstitutional.
Issues
May a state sterilize a person for repeated criminal offenses?
Holding/Rule
A state may not sterilize a person for repeated criminal offenses.
Reasoning
Marriage and procreation are fundamental civil rights.
The power to sterilize may have subtle, far-reaching, and devastating effects.
In evil or reckless hands, it could cause races or types of people not in the majority to disappear.
This law fails equal protection.
The law sterilizes people who commit grand larceny three times yet leaves embezzlers alone.
There is no basis for inferring that the line between these two has any significance in eugenics or in the inheritability of genes regarding these two offenses.
Thus, these lines are artificial and unfair; the EPC would be empty words if such a distinction were allowed to stand.
Dissent
Stone (concurring)
We should not decide this based on the EPC.
The wholesale condemnation of a certain class in this way is such an invasion of personal liberty that it is a violation of the DPC.
