Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2003

Lawrence v. Texas

539 U.S. 558 | 123 S. Ct. 2472 | 156 L. Ed. 2d 508 | 2003 U.S. LEXIS 5013

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Takeaway

In short, Lawrence held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects private, consensual sexual intimacy between adults and overruled Bowers, barring States from criminalizing such same-sex conduct.

Background

Houston police officers entered John Lawrence’s apartment after responding to a reported weapons disturbance. Inside, they observed Lawrence and Tyron Garner, both adults, engaging in consensual sexual conduct. The men were arrested, held overnight, and charged under Texas Penal Code § 21.06(a), which made “deviate sexual intercourse” a crime only when it occurred between persons of the same sex.

Lawrence and Garner pleaded nolo contendere after pursuing a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. Each received a $200 fine plus costs. They argued that the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, but the Texas courts rejected those claims. Sitting en banc, the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals treated Bowers v. Hardwick as controlling and affirmed. The Supreme Court granted review to consider the equal-protection claim, the due-process liberty claim, and whether Bowers should be overruled.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Due Process Clause protects consenting adults from criminal punishment for private same-sex sexual intimacy.

Holding

Yes. The Due Process Clause protects the liberty of adults to engage in private, consensual intimate sexual conduct without state criminal intervention.

Reasoning

The Court framed the claimed liberty broadly. The case was not merely about a claimed right to perform a particular sexual act; it concerned the right of adults to decide whether to enter an intimate personal relationship and to express that relationship in private. Reducing the claim to “homosexual sodomy,” the Court said, demeaned the depth of the personal liberty at stake.

The Court placed this liberty interest within a line of decisions recognizing constitutional protection for intimate personal decisions. Griswold protected marital contraception; Eisenstadt extended protection for contraceptive decisions to unmarried persons; Roe recognized a substantive liberty interest in abortion decisions; and Carey confirmed that sexual and reproductive choices could not be limited to married adults. Casey further described intimate decisions concerning marriage, procreation, family, and personal identity as central to Fourteenth Amendment liberty.

Texas could not justify its intrusion simply by invoking moral disapproval of homosexual conduct. The Constitution protects a realm of personal liberty in which the State may not use criminal law to enforce the majority’s moral views against consenting adults acting privately. The Court emphasized that its ruling did not concern minors, coercion, injury, public conduct, prostitution, or any claim to formal legal recognition of a relationship.

The Texas statute therefore furthered no legitimate state interest sufficient to justify criminalizing the petitioners’ private conduct. Criminal conviction also carried serious stigma and collateral consequences, including effects on employment and, potentially, sex-offender registration in other States. The State could not demean homosexual persons’ existence or control their destiny by making their private consensual sexual conduct a crime.

Issue #2

Whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled.

Holding

Yes. Bowers was wrongly decided and is overruled.

Reasoning

Bowers had misconceived the liberty claim by asking only whether homosexual persons possessed a fundamental right to engage in sodomy. That narrow formulation ignored that the challenged laws regulated intimate relationships and private conduct central to personal dignity and autonomy.

The historical account on which Bowers relied was overstated. Early American sodomy laws generally prohibited nonprocreative sexual conduct without distinguishing same-sex from different-sex conduct, and historical prosecutions frequently involved force, minors, unequal status, public conduct, or bestiality rather than consenting adults in private. Laws specifically targeting same-sex conduct developed much later, largely in the final third of the twentieth century.

Legal and social developments before and after Bowers undermined its premises. The Model Penal Code had recommended against criminalizing private consensual sexual conduct; many States repealed or invalidated sodomy prohibitions; and post-Bowers decisions such as Casey and Romer confirmed robust constitutional protection for personal autonomy and against laws reflecting animosity toward homosexual persons.

Stare decisis did not require retaining Bowers. Although precedent ordinarily promotes stability, Bowers had generated no reliance interest comparable to cases recognizing individual liberty. Its reasoning conflicted with related precedent, had drawn sustained criticism, and imposed continuing stigma on homosexual persons. The Court concluded that Bowers was incorrect when decided and could not remain binding precedent.

Concurrences

Justice O'Connor

Reasoning

Justice O'Connor joined the Court's result, but justice O’Connor agreed that Texas’s statute was unconstitutional but declined to join the Court’s decision to overrule Bowers or its substantive-due-process analysis. In her view, the case could and should be resolved under the Equal Protection Clause because Texas criminalized the specified sexual conduct only when it occurred between persons of the same sex.

Applying rational-basis review, Justice O’Connor reasoned that Texas treated similarly situated people differently: opposite-sex couples could engage in the conduct without criminal liability, while same-sex couples could not. Although the text regulated conduct, the targeted conduct was so closely connected to homosexual persons that the law effectively singled out gay people as a class for disfavored treatment.

Moral disapproval of homosexual persons, standing alone, was not a legitimate state interest under equal protection doctrine. Drawing on Moreno, Cleburne, and Romer, she explained that the Constitution does not permit a State to impose a legal disadvantage on a politically unpopular group merely because the majority dislikes that group or its conduct.

The statute’s effects extended beyond infrequent prosecutions. It branded homosexual persons as criminals and supplied a basis for discrimination in employment, housing, family matters, and professional licensing. Justice O’Connor concluded that Texas could not impose this unequal criminal stigma solely on the basis of moral disapproval.

Dissents

Justice Scalia

Reasoning

Justice Scalia argued that the Court abandoned stare decisis without applying the demanding approach it had used in Casey to retain Roe v. Wade. In his view, Bowers was only seventeen years old, was not unworkable, had generated substantial societal reliance, and could not fairly be discarded because it had been criticized or because later decisions had allegedly eroded it.

He maintained that the Court never identified a fundamental right to homosexual sodomy or applied strict scrutiny, as substantive-due-process doctrine would require for a fundamental liberty interest. Under the traditional framework, he argued, only rights deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition receive heightened protection, and longstanding criminal prohibitions on sodomy showed that the asserted right did not qualify.

Justice Scalia rejected the majority’s historical analysis as beside the point. Whether older laws specifically targeted homosexual conduct or generally prohibited sodomy, he reasoned, homosexual sodomy was criminalized throughout American history. A recent trend toward decriminalization, or the decisions of foreign nations and international courts, could not establish a constitutional right deeply rooted in American tradition.

He further concluded that Texas had a rational basis for the law: the State’s moral judgment that certain sexual conduct is immoral and unacceptable. In his view, morality has long been a legitimate basis for legislation, and denying that proposition endangered laws against fornication, adultery, bigamy, adult incest, prostitution, bestiality, and obscenity.

Justice Scalia also rejected the equal-protection analysis. The statute applied formally to men and women alike by prohibiting same-sex conduct for either sex, and any classification affecting homosexual persons was still subject only to rational-basis review. Traditional sexual morality, he concluded, was sufficient to satisfy that standard. He warned that the majority’s reasoning undermined the constitutional basis for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas joined Justice Scalia’s dissent. He separately described the Texas law as “uncommonly silly” and stated that he would vote to repeal it if he were a Texas legislator.

Nonetheless, he concluded that personal disagreement with a law did not give the Court authority to invalidate it. He found no general constitutional right of privacy, or equivalent liberty right, broad enough to invalidate Texas’s criminal prohibition, and therefore would have left repeal to the democratic process.