The NC Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation is a priority of Governor Beverly Perdue, who included it in her first budget. In 2009, the NC Legislature allocated $250,000 in start-up funding for the Foundation and assigned it to the NC Department of Administration (DOA). On March 1, 2010, it officially became a Division of DOA’s Internal Services and Programs section.

The Foundation was created to develop a plan to provide justice and compensate victims who were forcibly sterilized by the State of North Carolina between 1929 and 1974 under the authority of the now abolished North Carolina Eugenics Board.