Mexican Americans also faced a darker form of discrimination during the Progressive Era. In this period, several dozen states passed eugenics laws, outlining legal criteria for compulsory sterilization. In California, eugenicists at public institutions like Sonoma State Hospital and Whittier State School began their sterilization programs in the 1910s. These doctors believed that "dispositions" for poverty, crime, mental illness, disability, and violence were inheritable, and thus, anyone diagnosed as "insane," "feebleminded," or "epileptic" was unfit for "breeding." They would thus be permanently sterilized in order to solve the nation's social ills. Recommendations for surgical sterilization were heavily influenced by eugenic prejudices regarding the biological inadequacy of poor and non-white people. As a result, Mexican American men, women, and children were disproportionately sterilized in California. By some estimates, Mexican Americans were between 40 and 60% more likely to be permanently sterilized than their white counterparts. Progressive-era elites also passed severe Anti-miscegenation laws, as well as laws prohibiting "normal" individuals from marrying people with low-IQs, in order to "breed" a more healthy nation. California's eugenic laws were the basis for Nazi eugenics.