In 1929, two years after the landmark US Supreme Court ruling of Buck v. Bell in which sterilization was ruled permissible under the U.S. Constitution, North Carolina passed an updated law that formally laid down rules for the sterilization of citizens. This law, entitled "An Act to Provide For the Sterilization of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded Inmates of Charitable and Penal Institutions of the State of North Carolina", was similar to the law which preceded it, although this new Act contained several new provisions.