"I never expected that I'd finish a lecture at noon and the governor would make an apology by 3:30 p.m.," Lombardo said.
He and George Cunningham, a genetic disease expert in the state Department of Health Services, said it was unknown how many forced-sterilization victims are living in California, but suggested that the number is probably small because most sterilizations occurred before World War II.
"There is no registry of these cases," Lombardo said.
Davis' apology did not propose reparations or other compensation to the victims or their families.
Lombardo said it would be difficult for survivors to collect damages in a lawsuit against the government because the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of forced sterilization in 1927.
He told the hearing of the Select Committee on Genetics, Genetic Technologies and Public Policy that Adolf Hitler's Third Reich borrowed generously from U.S. laws when it imposed forced sterilization on "undesirables."
Lombardo, a lawyer and historian, said eugenics started with the goal of encouraging development of a world of healthy individuals who would pass along their best traits to the next generation.
He said many leading minds of the late 1800s and early 1900s enthusiastically supported eugenics.
Contests were held to determine "perfect children," movies publicized the movement, and major foundations financed eugenics research, Lombardo said.
He said supporters were successful in persuading the Los Angeles Times to run a series of favorable articles about eugenics in its Sunday magazine.
Lombardo said eugenics was an "incredibly popular movement" and a household word in America because Americans "all wanted to help the children." Eugenics was defined as "to be well born" and to have a "happy heritage."
At the time, the mantra was, "Let's get rid of crime and poverty. Let's have healthy children. Who could argue against it?"
In 1929, California became the second state to adopt forced sterilization as law and accounted for a third of the total cases nationally during the 35 years that eugenics was state policy, he said.
Many early supporters of eugenics became disillusioned with the movement, Lombardo said, when it got sidetracked into a policy for selective breeding.
