How did the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell support compulsory sterilization?

In the 1927 case Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, which authorized the compulsory sterilization of individuals deemed "feebleminded" or otherwise "unfit" while institutionalized.12

The Court’s decision, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., provided legal legitimacy to the eugenics movement by ruling that such procedures did not violate the due process or equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Holmes famously justified the state's power to prevent the reproduction of those it labeled "manifestly unfit" by stating, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".13

This ruling was ethically catastrophic, as it relied on flawed, discriminatory assumptions about heredity and social value to strip vulnerable individuals of their bodily autonomy. The decision encouraged other states to adopt similar forced sterilization laws, leading to the sterilization of approximately 60,000 people in the United States and providing a legal precedent later cited by Nazi officials to justify their own eugenics-based atrocities.12