Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Lawrence v. Texas Part I

Lawrence v. Texas, 539U.S. 558 (2003), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court inwhich the Court ruled that sanctions of criminal punishment for thosewho commit sodomy are unconstitutional. The Court reaffirmed theconcept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases,such as Roe v. Wade, had found the U.S. Constitution provides,even though it is not explicitly enumerated. The Court based itsruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's ownrelationships and of American traditions of non-interference withprivate sexual decisions between consenting adults.

In 1998, John Geddes Lawrence Jr., anolder white man, was arrested along with Tyron Garner, a youngerblack man, at Lawrence's apartment in Harris County, Texas. Garner'sformer boyfriend had called the police, claiming that there was a manwith a weapon in the apartment. Sheriff's deputies said they foundthe men engaging in sexual intercourse. Lawrence and Garner werecharged with a misdemeanor under Texas' anti-sodomy law; both pleadedno contest and received a fine. Assisted by the American civil rightsorganization Lambda Legal, Lawrence and Garner appealed theirsentences to the Texas Courts of Appeals, which ruled in 2000 thatthe sodomy law was unconstitutional. Texas appealed to have the courtrehear the case en banc, and in 2001 it overturned its prior judgmentand upheld the law. Lawrence appealed this decision to the TexasCourt of Criminal Appeals, which denied his request for appeal.Lawrence then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed tohear his case.

The Supreme Court struck down thesodomy law in Texas in a 6–3 decision and, by extension,invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexualactivity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court, with afive-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the sameissue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld achallenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutionalprotection of sexual privacy. It explicitly overruled Bowers, holdingthat it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court heldthat intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the libertyprotected by substantive due process under the Due Process Clause ofthe Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lawrenceinvalidated similar laws throughout the United States thatcriminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private,whatever the sex of the participants.

The case attracted much publicattention, and many amici curiae ("friends of the court")briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rightsadvocates, and set the stage for further reconsideration of standinglaw, including the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges(2015) which recognized same-sex marriage as a fundamental rightunder the United States Constitution.

Background

Legal punishments for sodomy oftenincluded heavy fines, prison sentences, or both, with some states,beginning with Illinois in 1827, denying other rights, such assuffrage, to anyone convicted of the crime of sodomy. In the late19th and early 20th centuries, several states imposed variouseugenics laws against anyone deemed to be a "sexual pervert".As late as 1970, Connecticut denied a driver's license to a man forbeing an "admitted homosexual".

As of 1960, every state had ananti-sodomy law. In 1961, the American Law Institute's Model PenalCode advocated the repeal of sodomy laws as they applied to private,adult, consensual behavior. Two years later the American CivilLiberties Union (ACLU) took its first major case in opposition tothese laws.

In Griswold v. Connecticut(1965), the Supreme Court struck down a law barring the use ofcontraceptives by married couples. In Griswold, the Supreme Courtrecognized for the first time that couples, at least married couples,had a right to privacy, drawing on the Fourth Amendment's protectionof private homes from searches and seizures without a warrant basedon probable cause, the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of dueprocess of law in the states, and the Ninth Amendment's assurancethat rights not specified in the Constitution are "retainedby the people". Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) expandedthe scope of sexual privacy rights to unmarried persons. In 1973,the choice whether to have an abortion was found to be protected bythe Constitution in Roe v. Wade.