Forced sterilization is a human rights abuse we typically associate with another time and another place. But yesterday a North Carolina task force heard heart-wrenching testimony from some of the victims of the state’s 40-year-long forced sterilization program that targeted poor, undereducated, and mentally unstable residents.

North Carolina is considering compensating some of the nearly 7,600 victims of the program or their relatives. The program was overseen by the North Carolina Board of Eugenics and persisted well into the 1970s. Some of the victims were as young as 10 years old, and many were poor women the state deemed too “promiscuous” to be good mothers:

Nearly 7,600 men, women and children as young as 10 were sterilized under North Carolina’s eugenics laws. While other state sterilization laws focused mainly on criminals and people in mental institutions, North Carolina was one of the few to expand its reach to women who were poor.

Sterilization was seen as a way to limit the public cost of welfare. Social workers would coerce women to have the operation under threat of losing their public assistance.[...]

The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families who hung around the wrong crowd or didn’t do well in school. Girls like 13-year-old LeLa Dunston, who had just had a baby. Dunston is now 63.

Victims and family members packed into a room at a Department of Agriculture office building Wednesday to hear stories from survivors. One who testified was Elaine Riddick, who was sterilized without her knowledge at the age of 14 after she was raped and became pregnant. The state said Riddick “was promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others.” “They cut me open like I was a hog,” Riddick said.

NPR points out that just 40 years ago, “it wasn’t uncommon for a single mother on welfare, or a patient in a mental hospital in North Carolina, to be sterilized against her will.” More than half the states had eugenics laws, but unusually, North Carolina conducted most of its sterilizations after World War II and the atrocities of Nazi eugenics programs came to light.

Seven states, including North Carolina, have issued apologies to the victims of forced sterilization programs, but North Carolina would be the first to compensate them. An estimated 3,000 victims are still living and could qualify, depending on what the state task force decides in its preliminary recommendation, which are due out in August.

Sarah Bufkin contributed to this post.

Earlier today, a 5-4 Supreme Court reached the somewhat bizarre conclusion that generic drug manufacturers are immune from state lawsuits claiming that they failed to warn their consumers of potential risks, but brand name drug makers are not. The five conservatives concluded that a federal law requiring generic drug makers to use the same FDA-approved warning label as their brand name counterparts preempts any state laws requiring stronger labels, while the four more progressive justices believed the drug makers must first ask the FDA to consider ordering a new label before they can invoke lawsuit immunity.

The heart of this case is a legal doctrine known as “preemption,” which says that federal law trumps state law when the two conflict. For decades, the Supreme Court applied this doctrine very sparingly. Invalidating a state law is, after all, a direct assault on a state’s right to govern itself, and so most state laws come to the courts with a presumption that they should not be preempted.

Given the right’s apparent love affair with states rights, one would expect conservative justices to be especially cautious about preempting state laws. As it turns out, however, their regard for states rights ends the minute corporate America starts asking them to invalidate state laws. With the occasional exception of Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court’s right flank could hardly be more aggressive in wielding preemption to knock out state laws.

Today’s opinion (which Thomas wrote), takes these justices’ fair-weather federalism to an entirely new level. Despite the longstanding presumption against preemption, four of the Court’s five conservatives joined a plurality opinion claiming for that presumption to be reversed outright:

Moreover, the text of the Clause—that federal law shall be supreme, “any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”—plainly contemplates conflict pre-emption by describing federal law as effectively repealing contrary state law. The phrase “any[state law] to the Contrary notwithstanding” is a non obstante provision. Eighteenth century legislatures used non obstante provisions to specify the degree to which a new statute was meant to repeal older, potentially conflicting statutes in the same field. A non obstante provision “in a new statute acknowledged that the statute might contradict prior law and instructed courts not to apply the general presumption against implied repeals.”

Fortunately, Justice Anthony Kennedy recognized this as a drastic departure from existing law, so he joined the rest of the opinion without providing the fifth vote to create a presumption against states being able to enact consumer protections that go beyond federal minimums. Nevertheless, his four fellow conservatives sent a very clear message: they care about states rights, except when they care about something else.

 

ThinkProgress has obtained a draft letter Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) circulated this morning to his fellow members of Congress asking the House Judiciary Committee’s leadership to hold a hearing on the Supreme Court Transparency and Disclosure Act, a bill that will end the Supreme Court’s immunity to judicial ethics laws. As Murphy’s letter explains, his bill addresses the bevy of recently revealed ethics scandals involving members of the Supreme Court, including the Clarence Thomas gifting scandal:

There have been alarming reports of justices – most notably Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – attending political events and using their position to fundraise for organizations. These activities would be prohibited if the justices were required to abide by the Judicial Conference Code of Conduct, which currently applies to all other federal judges. On these issues the code is quite clear. Canon 4C states that “a judge should not personally participate in fund-raising activities, solicit funds for any organization, or use or permit the use of the prestige of the judicial office for that purpose.” Additionally, in Canon 5 the code states, “[a] judge must refrain from all political activity.” While we understand that the Supreme Court is unique by its very nature, we do not believe there should be one set of guidelines for Supreme Court justices and stricter standards for all others judges.

The Supreme Court possesses the incredible power to interpret or even strike down laws they deem inconsistent with the Constitution. America trusts them with this power because justices must come to each case without a personal or financial stake in the outcome. Recent revelations about Justice Thomas accepting tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from individuals and organizations who often have an interest in matters before the courts calls into question the Court’s impartiality. Canon 4D of the Code of Conduct incorporates regulations providing that “[a] judicial officer or employee shall not accept a gift from anyone who is seeking official action from or doing business with the court.” Yet Justice Thomas received a gift valued at $15,000 from an organization that had a brief pending before his Court at the very moment they gave him the gift. Incidents such as these undermine the integrity of the entire judiciary, and they should not be allowed to continue.

In a message attached to the draft letter, Murphy asks his colleagues to join him in signing his request for “Judiciary Committee hearing on the alarming number of reports of possible unethical conduct by Supreme Court justices.” Rep. Murphy’s full draft letter requesting a hearing is copied below the fold.

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Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.

JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.

According to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and networking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA has spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from $120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span this year. Meanwhile, “the relationship between government officials and private prison companies has been part of the fabric of the industry from the start,” notes the report. The cofounder of CCA himself used to be the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

The impact that the private prison industry has had is hard to deny. In Arizona, 30 of the 36 legislators who co-sponsored the state’s controversial immigration law that would undoubtedly put more immigrants behind bars received campaign contributions from private prison lobbyists or companies. Private prison businesses been involved in lobbying efforts related to a bill in Florida that would require privatizing all of the prisons in South Florida and have been heavily involved in appropriations bills on the federal level.

Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI recommends that we “take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.”

Real estate magnate Harlan Crow has been very good to Justice Clarence Thomas, lavishing gifts and other favors on Thomas and his family. Crow provided $500,000 to allow Thomas’ wife to start a Tea Party group, and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. He also served on the board of a corporate-aligned think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which once gave Thomas a $15,000 gift.

As ThinkProgress reported earlier this week, AEI filed at least three briefs in the Supreme Court after giving Thomas this very expensive gift, and Thomas either sided with AEI or took a position that was much more extreme that AEI’s in all three of these cases. ThinkProgress has now learned that a second Harlan Crow-affiliated group, the Center for the Community Interest, has a perfect record in front of Justice Thomas.

Crow served on CCI’s board alongside failed Bush judicial nominee Miguel Estrada. Westlaw’s database of Supreme Court briefs reveals eight briefs filed by CCI in eight different Supreme Court cases, and Justice Thomas voted for CCI’s preferred outcome in every single one of these cases:

• City of Chicago v. Morales: The lower court struck down a law “making it illegal for members of criminal gangs to loiter and fail to obey an order to disperse.” CCI asked the Court to reverse that decision, and Justice Thomas wrote a dissent saying that he would reverse.

• Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott: The lower court struck down a parole board’s warrantless search of a parolee’s residence. CCI asked the Court to reverse that decision, and Justice Thomas wrote the 5-4 decision reversing.

• Dickerson v. U.S.: The lower court upheld a statute cutting at the core of accused defendant’s Miranda rights. CCI asked the Court to affirm this decision. Justice Thomas joined a dissent which would have affirmed.

• U.S. v. Knights: The lower court struck down the warrantless search of a probationer’s residence. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.

• U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development v. Rucker: The lower court ruled in favor of public housing tenants who were evicted because their resident family members or caregivers violated drug laws. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.

• Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe: The lower court struck down a law requiring public disclosure of registered sex offenders. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.

• U.S. v. American Library Ass’n, Inc.: The lower court struck down a federal law requiring many public libraries to use filtering software that prevents web browsers from showing some pornographic material. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a plurality opinion reversing.

• Devenpeck v. Alford: The lower court held an arrest unconstitutional. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined an opinion reversing.

To be clear, there is no direct evidence that Crow lavished gifts on Thomas in order to switch his vote in any of these cases. But Thomas’ refusal to turn away Crow’s gifts remains a severe blow to the integrity of the judiciary. The losing parties in each of these cases has a right to be confident that their cases were decided solely on the merits, and Thomas’ relationship with Crow strikes directly at that confidence.