Previous case law had been defined by Griffith v. Eldryth (1915), which has ruled that “creatures” were not citizens and therefore were subject to no protections. This ruling, widely regarded as one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions, paved the way for over 50 years of violence against sapients, including the annihilation of whole populations and the virtual extinction of others. Those who could were forced to pass as human, including Willow Eldryth himself, who had his ears clipped and died under the name John Smith in 1937.

Sonox v. Charleston (1977) overturned Griffith, and restored full citizenship and rights to all sapients. Though some later jurists found fault with the Sonox definition of a sapient being (excluding entities able to write but not speak, for instance) it became the bedrock of state and federal law regarding the matter for nearly 50 years.

It took until 2022 for Sonox to be overturned by Graves v. Sapient Services, but there had been relentless lobbying against Sonox from the beginning. Religious groups continued to insist that sapients were demons that should be exterminated on sight, while wealthy figures and corporations chafed under the reparations regime instituted by the Carter administration that required all property seized after Griffith to be either returned or compensated.

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