Nancy Hernandez (born c. 1945) is an American who was a 21-year-old resident and mother of two in Santa Barbara, California, in 1966, when she was ordered to be sterilized or be imprisoned.
The judge's decision channeled eugenic principles to assert that if Hernandez acts immorally then she should not be allowed to have more children.
Her court-ordered attorney submitted a writ of habeas corpus to the superior court, which was granted by the judge.
Her case was the first to receive national attention for sentences that called for sterilization of minority women.
Instead, judges across the United States used sterilization for punishment of crimes calling these men and women unfit.
The probation report stated that "she is a likeable person, apparently easily influenced by her associations, that she appears genuinely sorry for having committed the offense, that she has no prior criminal record".
This practice existed well through the twentieth century and was a form of eugenics and neo-eugenics to control minority populations in America.
[1] In Herndandez's case, it was assumed that because she was a minority and in the presence of marijuana that she naturally would descend to non-moral conduct and should not have children.
[1] Her court-appointed attorney, Louis Renga, filed a writ of habeas corpus with the superior court.
[3][5] In his opinion, the Judge C. Douglas Smith stated: In our Country we are a people governed under law and not by the whims and caprice of men in power.
[6] According to researcher Luis Quinones, by standing up against sterilization as a sentence, her case is one of the important events in Hispanic history in the United States.