RALEIGH --

Authorities who are reviewing claims say one main reason so few claims have been approved is that a state law setting aside $10 million for the qualifying victims doesn't cover many of those who had been sterilized.

As of Sept. 30, the N.C. Industrial Commission had approved 213 claims for compensation of the 731 claims reviewed, or about 30 percent. The Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims has received another 55 claims that the commission hasn't yet reviewed under the state law, approved in July 2013.

Major reasons for denials - which victims can appeal - include missing paperwork and a determination someone wasn't sterilized on orders of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina but on orders issued at the county level, said Graham Wilson, spokesman for the state Commerce Department. That department oversees the industrial commission tasked with approving claims.

North Carolina sterilized about 7,600 people whom the state deemed feeble-minded or otherwise undesirable between 1929 and 1974. Wilson noted that compensation is allowed only those sterilized under orders of the state eugenics board.

"It's the way the statute is written," Wilson said. "If counties took it upon themselves to do it under their authority, they do not qualify." Victims can appeal, he said, "but if the documents show the procedure wasn't done under the state authority, they really don't have any case in this process."

Some of the victims were as young as 10 and chosen because they were promiscuous or did not get along with their schoolmates, authorities have said. While most were either forced or coerced into having the procedure, a small number of them chose to be sterilized.

But that's just at the state level.

It's not known how many were sterilized at the county level, said Elizabeth Haddix, senior staff attorney with the UNC Center for Civil Rights, which is representing 40 victims. Of those, just 10 had files from the state board, she noted.

"The rest of them, their stories were almost identical in terms of having a social worker come to their delivery room or hospital room," she said. The social worker might tell the patient, usually a black woman, that she wouldn't be eligible for public assistance unless she was sterilized, Haddix said.

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Deadline for compensation for North Carolina eugenics claims