Japan’s top court orders government to compensate disabled people who were forcibly sterilized

TOKYO (AP) — In a landmark decision, Japan’s Supreme Court ordered the government Wednesday to pay suitable compensation to about a dozen victims who were forcibly sterilized under a now-defunct Eugenics Protection Law that was designed to eliminate offspring of people with disabilities.

An estimated 25,000 people were sterilized between the 1950s and 1970s without consent to “prevent the birth of poor-quality descendants” under the law, described by plaintiffs’ lawyers as “the biggest...