Today in Supreme Court History: June 4, 1923

6/4/1923: Meyer v. Nebraska decided.

Comments

[bye]

I respect the Josh Blackman of the 3rd Revised Heritage Guide to the Consitution so I will assume he finds Buck v Bell case thoroughly disgusting and esp the sht descent of a Justice to saying :
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., stated that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough,"

So the civilization built on helping the most needy among us started to go the murderous route.

In a letter to Harold Laski, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote:

I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.

WHY DO SUCH FOOLS MAKE IT TO THE SUPREME COURT ???

[not guilty]

Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that police power of the Commonwealth of Virginia is broad enough to encompass involuntary sterilization:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).

Justice Scam Alito has opined:

A law regulating abortion, like other health and welfare laws, is entitled to a "strong presumption of validity." . . . It must be sustained if there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought that it would serve legitimate state interests.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization,597 U.S. 215, ___, 142 S.Ct. 2228, 2284 (2022).

Construing the state's police power that broadly can lead to horrific results. Please indulge me a hypothetical to illustrate.

Suppose a state legislature were to enact a law to criminalize any female under the age of 18 giving birth within its borders. (I realize that that is unlikely to actually happen, but it's called a hypothetical for a reason.) That measure could easily satisfy rational basis review. The legislature could rationally believe that adult females are likely to bear healthier babies than adolescent females. It could rationally believe that younger mothers and their offspring are more likely to become public charges dependent on public assistance. See, Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 633 (1969) ("We recognize that a State has a valid interest in preserving the fiscal integrity of its programs. It may legitimately attempt to limit its expenditures, whether for public assistance, public education, or any other program.") The legislature could rationally believe that females who defer childbearing until adulthood are more likely to continue their education and become more productive members of society.

Buck and Dobbs, read together, carry the potential for significant mischief by state legislatures.

[Area Man]

Dobbs: It's rational for states to pass laws that limit or prohibit killing people within their borders.

Liberals: How is this any different from the government forcibly sterilizing the mentally disabled?

If you can't see the difference, that's on you.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Dobbs did not recognize the personhood ("people") of fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses.

It did deem it rational to deny people (girls/women for someone annoyed at my usage) control of their reproductive lives.

The connection between stopping forced eugenics and forced pregnancies is not too hard to reach.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"An act relating to the teaching of foreign languages in the State of Nebraska."

Sweet Land is a charming film that partially deals with the anti-German sentiment in the WWI era that helped motivate such laws. In 1920, Inge, a German national, travels from Norway to rural Minnesota for her arranged marriage to Olaf, a Norwegian farmer.