Minnesota’s Catholic Supreme Court justice

On May 2, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its verdict in the case Buck v. Bell. The court ruled in favor of John Hendren Bell, superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded*, upholding a Virginia statute that favored involuntary sterilization of individuals who were deemed mentally unfit. Only one justice dissented. He was Pierce Butler, a Catholic and native of Minnesota.

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