RALEIGH A first deadline for compensation payments to those sterilized under North Carolinas past eugenics program is looming at the end of the month and less than a third of compensation claims have been approved.

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 doesnt 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 hasnt 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 wasnt 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 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.

Its 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 wasnt done under the state authority, they really dont 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 thats just at the state level.

Its 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 wouldnt be eligible for public assistance unless she was sterilized, Haddix said.

Others werent even asked, she said, noting one client who went in for surgery to remove her appendix came out of the operating room sterilized.

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Deadline looms for eugenics claims compensation