Edna Smith Primus, Lawyer and Plaintiff in Landmark Supreme Court Case on Right of Advocacy on Reproductive Rights, Dies
Edna Smith Primus, an African American lawyer in South Carolina, and who won a landmark Supreme Court decision protecting lawyers’ right to advance social and political agendas, died on this day. The Court ruled in her favor, 7-1, in In Re Primus (1978).
The case arose because women with three (or even two) children who were on welfare were being coerced by doctors into being sterilized after giving birth to their latest child. A national uproar occurred in the early 1970s over publicity about the sterilization practices, which occurred largely in the south and mainly involved African American women. In Aiken County, where Primus practiced law, 18 of 32 Medicaid-funded deliveries in 1972 had involved sterilizations; 16 of the 18 women were African American.
Primus was working as a lawyer for the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, and was also a volunteer lawyer for the ACLU in South Carolina. She was sent to Aiken County to talk with women about the sterilization requirement, some of who had already consented to the procedure. She indicated that the ACLU would represent her without charge if they would sue the doctor in question. The doctor, Dr Charles Pierce, was the only obstretrician in Aiken County, filed a complaint against Primus for violating professional ethics by soliciting clients for personal financial gain. Both the state bar association and the South Carolina Supreme Court cited her solicitation. The court’s Board of Grievances and Discipline upgraded the charge to a public reprimand. Primus argued that the reprimand would seriously damage her ability of practice law in the state.
The ACLU accepted the case and took it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided In re Primus by a 7-1 vote on May 30, 1978. Writing for the Court, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. held that the ACLU was a “bona fide nonprofit organization that pursues litigation as a vehicle for effective political expression and association.” Primus and the ACLU had contacted the woman in the case (who had already consented to sterlization) “to advance civil liberties objectives of the ACLU rather than to derive financial gain.”
Edna Smith Primus graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law. A grand niece was scheduled to graduate from the School of Law just two weeks after Primus’ death.
Learn more about Edna Smith Primus here
And about the significance of the case here