Lawrence v. Texas

539 U.S. 558, argued 26 March 2003, decided 26 June 2003 by vote of 5‐1‐3; Kennedy for the Court, O'Connor concurring; Scalia authored the principal dissent, Thomas wrote a short separate dissent.

Striking down a Texas statute making it a crime for persons of the same sex to engage in intimate sexual conduct, the Court extended the federal right of privacy to same‐sex partners and expressly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which had rejected a federal due process challenge by homosexuals to state statutes that criminalized acts of sodomy between consenting adults in private.

The majority opinion refuted the historical claim asserted in Bowers of a long American tradition of prohibiting same‐sex sexual relations and relied instead on the decriminalization of sodomy in other countries (such as the United Kingdom in 1967, as well as comparable action by the European Court of Human Rights in 1981) as evidence that Western views about homosexuality had changed. Justice Anthony Kennedy also noted that the reaffirmation of the right of privacy in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), and the decision in Romer v. Evans (1996), undermined the precedential strength of Bowers.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor did not join the Court in overruling Bowers. Rather, her concurrence argued that Texas's ban on same‐sex, but not opposite‐sex, sodomy indicated nothing other than the state's moral disapproval of homosexuals and that laws premised merely on moral disapproval fail the test of minimum rationality required under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent charged that “the court … has largely signed on to the so‐called homosexual agenda,” although insisting he had “nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.” Nonetheless, he lamented that “the court has taken sides in the culture war.”

Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent said the Texas statute is “uncommonly silly” and that he would vote to repeal it if a member of the Texas legislature. However, finding no “general right of privacy” in the Constitution, he had no authority to invalidate the law as a judge.

State sodomy statutes are often a sign of general hostility toward homosexuals. Thus, their abolition in Lawrence may greatly expand the civil rights of gay people.

— Daniel Pinello

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Opinion of the Court of Appeals of Texas, Fourteenth District, March 15, 2001

2. Briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court

2.1. Brief of Petitioners

2.2. Respondent's Brief

3. Opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, June 26, 2003

ISSUE

Gay and Lesbian Rights

HOW TO USE MILESTONES IN THE LAW

This section allows readers to investigate the facts, the arguments, and the legal reasoning that produced the Lawrence v. Texas decision. It also sheds light on the roles and required skills of attorneys and judges in resolving disputes.

As you read this section you may wish to consider the following issues:

• How did the appellant's description of the issues before the Court, or questions presented, differ from the appellee's description?
• How did the courts and the two parties differ in describing the meaning of particular prior cases to the present case?
• How did the holdings (conclusions of law) of the appeals court differ from those of the Supreme Court?
• On what points in the Supreme Court's majority opinion do the concurring and dissenting justices agree and disagree?

THIS CASE IN HISTORY

Lawrence v. Texas was a significant gain for the cause of gay and lesbian civil rights. In this decision, the Supreme Court held that state laws prohibiting sodomy were unconstitutional, arguing that any government interest in consensual sex between adults, either homosexual or heterosexual, infringed upon the right to liberty protected by the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This argument follows the analysis made in rulings such as Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down bans on abortion and birth control (respectively) on the basis that such bans infringed on a person's right to liberty, which has been determined to include the rights to privacy and autonomy. Lawrence essentially overturned the 1986 precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick, in which the Court upheld a Georgia law prohibiting sodomy similar to the one struck down in Lawrence. A central argument for the decision in Bowers was that a long history of laws existed in Western civilization that have sought to repress homosexual conduct. The majority in Lawrence noted, however, that many sodomy laws have been overturned since Bowers, reflecting a new trend. Only 13 states in 2003, as compared to all 50 in 1961, still had laws prohibiting sodomy.

The Lawrence ruling caused considerable controversy. Opponents to the ruling contended that the majority manipulated the due process clause to push the cause of gay rights. They also disagreed with the overturning of Bowers v. Hardwick, because it took away from the states the power to determine their own moral laws.

Back to the Table of Contents

In the Supreme Court of the United States

No. 14-99-00109-CR & NO. 14-99-00111-CR

JOHN GEDDES LAWRENCE and TYRON GARNER, Appellants

v.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

IN COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, FOURTEENTH DISTRICT, HOUSTON

March 15, 2001, Substituted Majority, Concurring, and Dissenting Opinions Filed

PRIOR HISTORY: On Appeal from County Criminal Court at Law No. 10. Trial Court Cause Nos. 98-48530 and 98-48531. Harris County, Texas.

Sherman A. Ross, Judge.

This Opinion Substituted on Grant of Rehearing for Withdrawn Opinion of June 8, 2000.

DISPOSITION: Judgment of trial court affirmed.

Mitchell Katine of Houston, TX, Susanne B. Goldberg of New York, NY, Ruth E. Harlow of New York, NY, for appellants.

William Delmore, III of Houston, TX, for appellee.

J. Harvey Hudson, Justice. Justices Yates, Fowler, Edelman, Wittig, Frost, and Amidei join this opinion;

Justice Yates also filed a concurring opinion in which Justices Hudson, Fowler, Edelman, and Frost join;

Justice Fowler also filed a concurring opinion in which Justices Yates, Edelman, Frost, and Amidei join.

Justice Anderson filed a dissenting opinion in which Senior Chief Justice Murphy joins.

Senior Chief Justice Paul C. Murphy and Former Justice Maurice Amidei sitting by assignment.

PRIOR HISTORY: On Appeal from County Criminal Court at Law No. 10. Trial Court Cause Nos. 98-48530 and 98-48531. Harris County, Texas. Sherman A. Ross, Judge.

This Opinion Substituted on Grant of Rehearing for Withdrawn Opinion of June 8, 2000.

DISPOSITION: Judgment of trial court affirmed.

Statement of the Case

Appellants, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, were convicted of engaging in homosexual conduct. They were each assessed a fine of two hundred dollars. On appeal, appellants challenge the constitutionality of Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, contending it offends the equal protection and privacy guarantees assured by both the state and federal constitutions. For the reasons set forth below, we find no constitutional infringement.

While investigating a reported "weapons disturbance," police entered a residence where they observed appellants engaged in deviate sexual intercourse. It is a Class C misdemeanor in the State of Texas for a person to engage "in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." TEX. PEN. CODE ANN. § 21.06 (Vernon 1994). However, because appellants subsequently entered pleas of nolo contendere, the facts and circumstances of the offense are not in the record. Accordingly, appellants did not challenge at trial, and do not contest on appeal, the propriety of the police conduct leading to their discovery and arrest. Thus, the narrow issue presented here is whether Section 21.06 is facially unconstitutional.

Argument

EQUAL PROTECTION

In their first point of error, appellants contend Section 21.06 violates federal and state equal protection guarantees by discriminating both in regard to sexual orientation and gender.

The universal application of law to all citizens has been a tenet of English common law since at least the Magna Carta, and our whole system of law is predicated on this fundamental principle. Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312, 332, 66 L. Ed. 254, 42 S. Ct. 124 (1921). Nevertheless, our federal constitution did not originally contain an express guarantee of equal protection. While an assurance of equal protection could be implied from the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, this rudimentary guarantee was complicated by constitutional distinctions between "free" persons and persons "held to service or labour." U.S. CONST. arts. I, § 2 & IV, § 2.

Although the constitution did not establish or legalize slavery, it certainly recognized its existence within the states which tolerated it. See The Amistad, 40 U.S. 518, 551, 10 L. Ed. 826 (1841). This constitutional recognition of slavery undoubtedly facilitated a union of the original colonies, but it postponed until a later day a resolution of the tension between involuntary servitude and the concept of equal protection of laws implied by the Fifth Amendment. Reconciling the institution of slavery with the notion of equal protection ultimately proved to be impossible. In the end, a constitutional "clarification" was obtained by the force of arms, six hundred thousand lives, and two constitutional amendments.

In 1863, while the outcome of the civil war remained very much in doubt, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation purporting to free slaves found within the confederate states. In 1865, just months after general hostilities had ended, the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted. It declared that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." U.S. CONST. amend. XIII, § 1. The abolition of slavery, however, was not immediately effective in bestowing the equal protection of law upon all persons. Several centuries of slavery had instilled a deep cultural bias against people of color. Individual southern states began enacting the so-called Black Codes which were designed to repress their black citizens and very nearly resurrect the institution of slavery. City of Memphis v. Greene, 451 U.S. 100, 132, 67 L. Ed. 2d 769, 101 S. Ct. 1584 (1981) (White, J., concurring). In response to these events, the Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in an attempt to ensure equal rights for former slaves. General Bldgs. Contrs. Assn., Inc. v. Pennsylvania, 458 U.S. 375, 389, 73 L. Ed. 2d 835, 102 S. Ct. 3141 (1982). In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted and its Equal Protection Clause enjoined the states from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws.

Thus, the central purpose of the Equal Protection Clause "is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race." Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 642, 125 L. Ed. 2d 511, 113 S. Ct. 2816 (1993). While the guarantees of "equal protection" and "due process of law" may overlap, the spheres of protection they offer are not coterminous. Truax, 257 U.S. at 332, 42 S. Ct. at 129. Rather, the right to "'equal protection of the laws' is a more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than 'due process of law.'" Bolling, 347 U.S. 497, 499, 98 L. Ed. 884, 74 S. Ct. 693 (1954). It is aimed at undue favor and individual or class privilege, on the one hand, and at hostile discrimination or the oppression of inequality, on the other. See Truax, 257 U.S. at 332-33, 42 S. Ct. at 129. It was not intended, however, "to interfere with the power of the state . . . to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people." Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U.S. 27, 31, 28 L. Ed. 923, 5 S. Ct. 357 (1884).

Similarly, Article I, § 3 of the Texas Constitution also guarantees equality of rights to all persons. Burroughs v. Lyles, 142 Tex. 704, 181 S.W.2d 570, 574 (Tex. 1944). It was designed to prevent any person, or class of persons, from being singled out as a special subject for discriminating or hostile legislation. Id. Because the state and federal equal protection guarantees share a common aim and are similar in scope, Texas cases have frequently followed federal precedent when analyzing the scope and effect of Article I, § 3. Hogan v. Hallman, 889 S.W.2d 332, 338 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1994, writ denied).

The Texas Equal Rights Amendment, however, has no federal equivalent. See TEX. CONST. art. I, § 3a. When Texas voters adopted it in 1972 by a four to one margin, both the United States and Texas constitutions already provided due process and equal protection guarantees. In the Interest of McLean, 725 S.W.2d 696, 698 (Tex. 1987). Thus, unless the amendment was an exercise in futility, it must have been intended to be more extensive and provide greater specific protection than either the United States or Texas due process and equal protection guarantees. Id.

All of the aforementioned state and federal guarantees of equal protection are tempered somewhat by the practical reality that the mere act of governing often requires discrimination between groups and classes of individuals. Casarez v. State, 913 S.W.2d 468, 493 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994). A state simply cannot function without classifying its citizens for various purposes and treating some differently than others. See Sullivan v. U.I.L., 616 S.W.2d 170, 172 (Tex. 1981). For example, able-bodied citizens may be required to serve in the armed forces, while the infirm are not. Casarez, 913 S.W.2d at 493.

The conflict between the hypothetical ideal of equal protection and the practical necessity of governmental classifications has spawned a series of judicial tests for determining when classifications are and are not permissible. The general rule is that legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 440, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313, 105 S. Ct. 3249 (1985). The general rule gives way, however, when a statute classifies persons by race, alienage, or national origin. Id. These factors are so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws separating persons according to these "suspect classifications" are subject to strict scrutiny. Id. Accordingly, laws directed against a "suspect class," or which infringe upon a "fundamental right," will be sustained only if they are suitably tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Id.; Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools, 487 U.S. 450, 457-58, 101 L. Ed. 2d 399, 108 S. Ct. 2481 (1988).

Sexual Orientation

Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Article I, § 3 of the Texas Constitution, and the Texas Equal Rights Amendment, appellants contend that Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code unconstitutionally discriminates against homosexuals. In other words, the statute improperly punishes persons on the basis of their sexual orientation.

The threshold issue we must decide is whether Section 21.06 distinguishes persons by sexual orientation. On its face, the statute makes no classification on the basis of sexual orientation; rather, the statute is expressly directed at conduct. While homosexuals may be disproportionately affected by the statute, we cannot assume homosexual conduct is limited only to those possessing a homosexual "orientation." Persons having a predominately heterosexual inclination may sometimes engage in homosexual conduct. Thus, the statute's proscription applies, facially at least, without respect to a defendant's sexual orientation.

However, a facially neutral statute may support an equal protection claim where it is motivated by discriminatory animus and its application results in a discriminatory effect. Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 264-65, 50 L. Ed. 2d 450, 97 S. Ct. 555 (1977). Appellants contend this discriminatory intent is evident in the evolution of Section 21.06. For most of its history, Texas has deemed deviate sexual intercourse, i.e., sodomy, to be unlawful whether performed by persons of the same or different sex. In 1973, however, the Legislature repealed its prohibition of sodomy generally, except when performed by persons of the same sex. Because "homosexual sodomy" is unlawful, while "heterosexual sodomy" is not, appellants contend the statute evidences a hostility toward homosexuals, not shared by heterosexuals.

While we find this distinction may be sufficient to support an equal protection claim, neither the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, nor the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has found sexual orientation to be a "suspect class." Thus, the prohibition of homosexual sodomy is permissible if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

The State contends the statute advances a legitimate state interest, namely, preserving public morals. One fundamental purpose of government is "to conserve the moral forces of society." Grigsby v. Reib, 105 Tex. 597, 607, 153 S.W. 1124, 1129 (Tex. 1913). In fact, the Legislature has outlawed behavior ranging from murder to prostitution precisely because it has deemed these activities to be immoral. Even our civil law rests on concepts of fairness derived from a moral understanding of right and wrong. The State's power to preserve and protect morality has been the basis for upholding such diverse statutes as requiring parents to provide medical care to their children, prohibiting the sale of obscene devices, forbidding nude dancing where liquor is sold, criminalizing child endangerment, regulating the sale of liquor, and punishing incest. Most, if not all, of our law is "based on notions of morality." Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 196, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140, 106 S. Ct. 2841 (1986).

Appellants claim the concept of "morality" is simply "the singling out [of] groups of people based on popular dislike or disapproval." Contending this practice was specifically condemned in Romer v. Evans, appellants argue that classifications based on sexual orientation can no longer be rationally justified by the State's interest in protecting morality. 517 U.S. 620, 116 S. Ct. 1620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855 (1996). We find, however, that appellant's broad interpretation of Romer is not supported by the text or rationale of the Court's opinion.

In Romer, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of Colorado's universal prohibition of any statute, regulation, ordinance, or policy making homosexual orientation the basis of any claim of minority status, quota preferences, protected status, or claim of discrimination. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, first observed that the Fourteenth Amendment does not give Congress a general power to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations. Romer, 517 U.S. at 627-28. Thus, discrimination in employment, accommodations, and other commercial activities has historically been rectified by the enactment of detailed statutory schemes. Id. at 628. The Court cited, for illustration, several municipal codes in Colorado that prohibited discrimination on the basis of age, military status, pregnancy, parenthood, custody of a minor child, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, or sexual orientation. Id. at 629. To the extent these codes protected homosexuals, however, they were rendered invalid by Colorado's constitutional amendment.

In striking down the amendment, the Supreme Court declared that all citizens have the right to petition and seek legislative protection from their government. "A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense." Id. at 633. "A State cannot . . . deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws." Id. at 635. Thus, while no individual, class, or group is guaranteed success, all persons have the right to seek legislation favoring their interests.

Here, appellants do not suggest that Section 21.06 unconstitutionally encumbers their right to seek legislative protection from discriminatory practices. Hence, Romer provides no support for appellants' position. Romer, for example, does not disavow the Court's previous holding in Bowers; it does not elevate homosexuals to a suspect class; it does not suggest that statutes prohibiting homosexual conduct violate the Equal Protection Clause; and it does not challenge the concept that the preservation and protection of morality is a legitimate state interest.

Moreover, while appellants may deem the statute to be based on prejudice, rather than moral insight, our power to review the moral justification for a legislative act is extremely limited. The constitution has vested the legislature, not the judiciary, with the authority to make law. In so doing, the people have granted the legislature the exclusive right to determine issues of public morality. If a court could overturn a statute because it perceived nothing wrong with the prohibited conduct, the judiciary would at once become the rule making authority for society—this the people have strictly forbidden. Accordingly, we must assume for the purposes of our analysis that the Legislature has found homosexual sodomy to be immoral.

The State also contends the legislature could have rationally concluded that "homosexual sodomy" is a different, and more reprehensible, offense than "heterosexual sodomy." This proposition is difficult to confirm because in American jurisprudence courts and legislatures have historically discussed the topic only in terms of vague euphemisms. In fact, statutes often made sodomy a criminal offense without ever defining the conduct. See Commonwealth v. Poindexter, 133 Ky. 720, 118 S.W. 943, 944 (Ky. 1909).

In its broadest common law form, the offense "consists in a carnal knowledge committed against the order of nature by man with man, or in the same unnatural manner with woman; or by man or woman, in any manner, with beast." Prindle v. State, 31 Tex. Crim. 551, 21 S.W. 360 (Tex. Crim. App. 1893). More restrictive definitions of sodomy, however, were commonly recognized. In many instances, for example, sodomy was restricted to carnal copulation between two human beings—sometimes further restricted to males (perhaps because it was difficult to "imagine that such an offense would ever be committed between a man and a woman"). Wise v. Commonwealth, 135 Va. 757, 115 S.E. 508, 509 (Va. 1923). In any event, only homosexual conduct between two men was included among the early capital crimes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Moreover, in some jurisdictions, including Texas, sodomy did not include oral sex. Prindle, 21 S.W. at 360; Poindexter, 118 S.W. at 944. Again, it is difficult to know whether this more narrow definition arose deliberately or was simply the product of legislative ignorance and/or judicial innocence. Conceivably, oral sex was "so unusual and unthinkable as perhaps not to have been even contemplated in the earlier stages of the law." Wise, 115 S.E. at 509.

Regardless of how these differing definitions of sodomy arose, we agree with the State's general contention that it has always been the legislature's prerogative to deem some acts more egregious than others. For example, the legislature has not chosen to make every homicide a capital offense; depending upon the circumstances, some homicides are first degree felonies, some are second degree felonies, some are state jail felonies, and others are lawful. Moreover, it is the duty of this Court to construe every statute in a manner that renders it constitutional if it is possible to do so consistent with a reasonable interpretation of its language. Trinity River Authority v. UR Consultants, Inc. Texas, 869 S.W.2d 367, 370 (Tex. App.—Dallas 1993), aff'd, 889 S.W.2d 259 (Tex. 1994). Accordingly, we find the legislature could have concluded that deviant sexual intercourse, when performed by members of the same sex, is an act different from or more offensive than any such conduct performed by members of the opposite sex.

Because (1) there is no fundamental right to engage in sodomy, (2) homosexuals do not constitute a "suspect class," and (3) the prohibition of homosexual conduct advances a legitimate state interest and is rationally related thereto, namely, preserving public morals, appellant's first contention is overruled.

Gender

Appellants also contend Section 21.06 unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of gender. In Texas, gender is recognized as a "suspect class." Barber v. Colorado Independent School Dist., 901 S.W.2d 447, 452 (Tex. 1995). In light of the Texas Equal Rights Amendment, classifications by gender are subject to "strict scrutiny" and will be upheld only if the State can show such classifications have been suitably tailored to serve a compelling state interest.

Appellants claim Section 21.06 discriminates on the basis of sex because criminal conduct is determined to some degree by the gender of the actors. For example, deviate sexual intercourse is not unlawful per se in Texas. While the physical act is not unlawful as between a man and woman, it is unlawful when performed between two men or two women. Appellants contend that because criminality under the statute is, in some respects, gender-dependent, Section 21.06 runs afoul of state and federal equal protection guarantees.

The State asserts the statute applies equally to men and women, i.e., two men engaged in homosexual conduct face the same sanctions as two women. Thus, the State maintains the statute does not discriminate on the basis of gender. Appellants respond by observing that a similar rationale was expressly rejected in the context of racial discrimination. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 9, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010, 87 S. Ct. 1817 (1967).

In Loving, the State of Virginia attempted to uphold its miscegenation statute in the face of an equal protection challenge by arguing that the statute did not discriminate on the basis of race because it applied equally to whites and blacks. The Supreme Court traced the origins of Virginia's miscegenation statute and concluded that "penalties for miscegenation arose as an incident to slavery." Loving, 388 U.S. at 6. Because the clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was "to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination," the court determined the statute was unconstitutional. Id., at 10.

Here, the State of Texas employs a comparable argument, namely, Section 21.06 does not discriminate on the basis of gender because it applies equally to men and women. Appellants' contend the argument was discredited by Loving and should not be followed here. But while the purpose of Virginia's miscegenation statute was to segregate the races and perpetuate the notion that blacks are inferior to whites, no such sinister motive can be ascribed to the criminalization of homosexual conduct. In other words, we find nothing in the history of Section 21.06 to suggest it was intended to promote any hostility between the sexes, preserve any unequal treatment as between men and women, or perpetuate any societal or cultural bias with regard to gender. Thus, we find appellants' reliance on Loving unpersuasive.

While Section 21.06 alludes to sex, not every statutory reference to gender constitutes an unlawful "gender-classification." Texas law provides, for example, that counties are authorized to increase participation by "women-owned businesses" in public contract awards by establishing a contract percentage goal for those businesses; when jurors are sequestered overnight, separate facilities must be provided for male and female jurors; employers are prohibited from permitting, requesting, or requiring female children to work topless; the Director of the Texas Department of Transportation must report to each house of the legislature regarding the department's progress in recruiting and hiring women; where a child is adopted by two parents, one must be female and the other male; female patients being transported from a jail to a mental health facility must be accompanied by a female attendant; circumcision of a female under the age of 18 is unlawful; etc. Whether these and many other gender-specific statutes, violate the Texas Equal Rights Amendment is not before us. We must assume, however, that the legislature enacted these provisions with full knowledge of Article I, section 3a of the Texas Constitution and perceived no conflict. The legislature, for example, has specifically admonished the governor and supreme court to ensure the full and fair representation of women when making their appointments to the Board of Directors of the State Bar of Texas, but to also make no "regard to race, creed, sex, religion, or national origin." TEX. GOV'T CODE ANN. § 81.020 (Vernon 1998).

The mere allusion to gender is not a talisman of constitutional invalidity. If a statute does not impose burdens or benefits upon a particular gender, it does not subject individuals to unequal treatment. See Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson, 122 F.3d 692, 702 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that while California's Proposition 209 mentions race and gender, it does not logically classify persons by race and gender); see also Hayden v. County of Nassau, 180 F.3d 42, 48-49 (2nd Cir. 1999) (entrance exam designed to diminish cultural bias on black applicants did not constitute a "racial classification" because it did not promote one race over another). While Section 21.06 includes the word "sex," it does not elevate one gender over the other. Neither does it impose burdens on one gender not shared by the other.

Where, as here, a statute is gender-neutral on its face, appellants bear the burden of showing the statute has had an adverse effect upon one gender and that such disproportionate impact can be traced to a discriminatory purpose. Sylvia Development Corp. v. Calvert County, Md., 48 F.3d 810, 819 (4th Cir. 1995); Keevan v. Smith, 100 F.3d 644, 650 (8th Cir. 1996). Appellants have made no attempt to establish, nor do they even contend, that Section 21.06 has had any disparate impact between men and women. Rather, appellants complain only that the statute has had a disparate impact between homosexuals and heterosexuals. While we recognize the statute may adversely affect the conduct of male and female homosexuals, this simply does not raise the specter of gender-based discrimination.

As we already have determined, the police power of a state may be legitimately exerted in the form of legislation where such statute bears a real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or some other phase of the general welfare. Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U.S. 105, 111-12, 73 L. Ed. 204, 49 S. Ct. 57 (1928). To the extent the statute has a disproportionate impact upon homosexual conduct, the statute is supported by a legitimate state interest. The first point of error is overruled.

PRIVACY

In their second point of error, appellants contend Section 21.06 violates the right to privacy guaranteed by both the state and federal constitutions. Appellants claim the intimate nature of the conduct at issue, when engaged in by consenting adults in private, is beyond the scope of governmental interference.

Neither the state nor federal constitutions contain an explicit guarantee of privacy. Thus, there is no general constitutional right to privacy. However, both constitutions contain express limitations on governmental power from which "zones of privacy" may be inferred. The United States Supreme Court has found five such zones in the Bill of Rights:

Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment. . . . The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, 85 S. Ct. 1678 (1965).

Similarly, the Texas Supreme Court has found "constitutionally protected zones of privacy emanating from several sections of article I of the Texas Constitution." City of Sherman v. Henry, 928 S.W.2d 464, 472 (Tex. 1996). These include: section 6, concerning freedom of worship; section 8, concerning freedom of speech and press; section 9, concerning searches and seizures; section 10, concerning the rights of an accused in criminal prosecutions; section 19, concerning deprivation of life, liberty and property, and due course of law; and section 25, concerning quartering soldiers in houses. Id.

Appellants do not specifically identify the constitutional provision which they claim creates a zone of privacy protecting consensual sexual behavior from state interference. However, we find there are but two provisions of the federal constitution which could arguably be construed to apply here—the Fourth and Ninth Amendments.

The Fourth Amendment is not applicable because appellants do not contest, and have never contested, the entry by police into the residence where they were discovered. Thus, we must assume the police conduct was both reasonable and lawful under the Fourth Amendment.

The Ninth Amendment also offers no support. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the defendants were convicted of violating the Georgia sodomy statute. 478 U.S. at 190-91. Relying upon Griswold v. Connecticut and other decisions recognizing "reproductive rights," the defendants argued that the Ninth Amendment creates a zone of privacy regarding consensual sexual activity that encompasses homosexual sodomy. The court rejected the argument and said "the position that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable." Bowers, 478 U.S. at 191.

Likewise, under the Texas Constitution, we perceive that there are but two provisions that would arguably support appellants' position—sections 9 and 19 of Article I. Again, because appellants have not challenged the search leading to their arrest, we must conclude the police did not violate section 9 of the Texas Constitution.

Although neither the Texas Supreme Court nor Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has considered whether section 19 creates a zone of privacy that would protect private homosexual behavior, the Supreme Court has held it does not protect private heterosexual behavior. In City of Sherman v. Henry, the court was confronted with a case where the city had denied a promotion to a police officer because he was having an adulterous affair with the wife of another officer. See Henry 928 S.W.2d at 465. The court held that Article I, section 19 does not create a right of privacy protecting adulterous conduct without state interference.

Sexual relations with the spouse of another is not a right that is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" or "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." Prohibitions against adultery have ancient roots. In the latter half of the 17th century in England, adultery was a capital offense. 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES *64. The common law brought to this country by the American colonists included the crime of adultery as previously defined by the canon law of England. United States v. Clapox, 13 Sawy. 349, 35 F. 575, 578 (D.Or.1888); FRANCIS WHARTON, A TREATISE ON CRIMINAL LAW vol. 11, §§ 1719-20, p. 524 (9th ed. 1885). Adultery was still considered a crime by courts and commentators in the latter half of the 19th century when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. See Clapox, 35 F. at 578; WHARTON, supra. In fact, adultery is a crime today in half of the states and the District of Columbia.

* * *

While other states, including Texas, have recently repealed laws criminalizing adultery, the mere fact that such conduct is no longer illegal in some states does not cloak it with constitutional protection. Henry, 928 S.W.2d at 470.

Similarly, we find homosexual conduct is not a right that is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" or "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." In America, homosexual conduct was classified as a felony offense from the time of early colonization. In fact, there was such unanimity of condemnation that sodomy was, before 1961, a criminal offense in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. at 193. In Texas, homosexual conduct has been a criminal offense for well over a century.

In addition to an American tradition of statutory proscription, homosexual conduct has historically been repudiated by many religious faiths. Moreover, Western civilization has a long history of repressing homosexual behavior by state action. Under Roman law, Justinian states that a lex Iulia imposed severe criminal penalties against "those who indulge in criminal intercourse with those of their own sex." Blackstone states that the "infamous crime against nature, committed either with man or beast" was a grave offense among the ancient Goths and that it continued to be so under English common law at the time of his writing. In his survey of the law, Montesquieu was prompted to conclude that "the crime against nature" is a "crime, which religion, morality, and civil government equally condemn."

Nevertheless, appellants contend that Texas should join several of our sister states who have legalized homosexual conduct. Certainly, the modern national trend has been to decriminalize many forms of consensual sexual conduct even when such behavior is widely perceived to be destructive and immoral, e.g., seduction, fornication, adultery, bestiality, etc. Our concern, however, cannot be with cultural trends and political movements because these can have no place in our decision without usurping the role of the Legislature. While the Legislature is not infallible in its moral and ethical judgments, it alone is constitutionally empowered to decide which evils it will restrain when enacting laws for the public good.

Our role was aptly defined over a hundred years ago by Justice Noggle who, while writing for the Idaho Supreme Court, observed: "The court is not expected to make or change the law, but to construe it, and determine the power of the law and the power the legislature had to pass such a law; whether that power was wisely or unwisely exercised, can be of no consequence." People v. Griffin, 1 Idaho 476, 479 (1873). Because we find no constitutional "zone of privacy" shielding homosexual conduct from state interference, appellants' second point of error is overruled.

The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

/s/ J. Harvey Hudson

Justice

Judgment rendered and Majority, Consenting, and Dissenting Opinions filed March 15, 2001. (Justices Yates, Fowler, Edelman, Wittig, Frost, and Amidei join this opinion; Justice Yates also filed a concurring opinion in which Justices Hudson, Fowler, Edelman, and Frost join; Justice Fowler also filed a concurring opinion in which Justices Yates, Edelman, Frost, and Amidei join. Justice Anderson filed a dissenting opinion in which Senior Chief Justice Murphy joins.)

En banc.

Affirmed on Rehearing En Banc; Majority and Dissenting Opinions of June 8, 2000, are Withdrawn and Substituted with Majority, Concurring, and Dissenting Opinions filed March 15, 2001.

CONCURRING OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC

I agree with the result reached by, and reasoning utilized by, the majority opinion. However, I write separately only to address one of the arguments raised by amicus curiae. Amicus curiae alleges that by overruling the prior panel's decision, this Court will have succumbed to improper political pressure and asserts "the best way for this Court to rebuke those who attempted to exercise improper political influence in the present case is to affirm the well-reasoned panel opinion."

The Texas Code of Judicial Conduct provides the guiding principals for every judge of this State in the performance of his or her judicial duties. TEX. CODE JUD. CONDUCT, reprinted in TEX. GOV'T CODE ANN., tit. 2, subtit. G app. B (Vernon 1998 & Supp. 2000). Each judge in Texas is instructed to "not be swayed by partisan interests, public clamor, or fear of criticism." Id. at Canon 3(B)(2). What amicus curiae requests this Court to do is, in effect, no different from what those who leveled political attacks against the majority in the panel opinion hoped to achieve, i.e., a certain desired result. In other words, amicus curiae asks this Court to shirk its bound duty in order to decide a difficult question of law differently from what it believes to be the correct resolution. Amicus curiae's request is grounded on the mistaken notion that any different result must surely be on the basis of political pressure, without crediting the members of this Court with the integrity to carry out their duties in strict accordance with the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct and with careful consideration of the legal issues presented in this appeal. As amicus curiae suggests, attacks on the judiciary, like the one following the panel opinion, may have the effect of increasing the potential that the public's confidence in our courts will diminish because of a perception, however erroneous, that we have made a political decision, not a legal one. But the response to such a reckless and irresponsible act cannot be that we ignore our duty to decide the law we have been entrusted to interpret. Attempts to politicize this opinion—regardless of their origin—have no place in our decisionmaking process, nor are attacks from opposing interests immune from creating the very same perception in the mind of the public that may now exist as a result of earlier inappropriate attempts to influence this decision.

"Judges are called upon to make hundreds of decisions each year. These decisions are made after consideration of opposing contentions, both of which are often based on reasonable interpretations of the laws of the United States and the Constitution." Second Circuit Chief Judges Criticize Attacks on Judge Baer, 215 N.Y.L.J. 4 (March 29, 1996). Unless there is a basis for disqualification or recusal, all judges must decide the matter brought before them. TEX. CODE JUD. CONDUCT, Canon 3(B)(1); Rogers v. Bradley, 909 S.W.2d 872, 879 (Tex. 1995) (Enoch, J., responding to Justice Gammage's declaration of recusal) (citing Sun Oil Co. v. Whitaker, 483 S.W.2d 808, 823-24 (Tex. 1972)). As one jurist has commented with regard to our duty to decide difficult matters presented to us:

All judges face the likelihood of being publicly criticized . . . for decisions that they render. It goes with the territory. A judge's oath is to decide cases based on the law and the facts . . . . Carl E. Stewart, Contemporary Challenges to Judicial Independence, 43 LOY. L. REV. 293, 306 (1997). There is simply no place for suggesting that the members of this Court are pandering to certain political groups or deciding a case as a means to achieve a politically desired end. And to do so only adds unnecessarily to the already politically charged climate created by the people amicus curiae purports to condemn.

Today we have been called upon to decide whether section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code lacks a rational basis or otherwise violates the constitutional right to privacy found in the constitutions of either Texas or the United States. We have done so—not because of political pressures, as amicus curiae has suggested, but despite them.

/s/ Leslie Brock Yates

Justice

Judgment rendered and Concurring Opinion filed March 15, 2001.

En banc.

CONCURRING OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC

Today the Court holds that section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code is not unconstitutional. I join in the court's opinion, however I write separately to make the following comments.

First, once the decision is made that the classifications in section 21.06 are not gender based, the analysis is relatively straightforward. A gender-based classification would require a heightened scrutiny of section 21.06 because gender is a protected class. However, sexual preference has not been designated a protected class by the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. See Majority Op. n. 8 supra. Consequently, in deciding whether 21.06 is constitutionally sound, we look only for a rational relationship between section 21.06 and the State's reasons for enacting it.

The State argues that 21.06 is directly related to the legislature's right to legislate morality. The United States Supreme Court has held that it is within a State's legitimate police power to legislate on grounds of morality. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 196, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140, 106 S. Ct. 2841 (1986); Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32, 99 L. Ed. 27, 75 S. Ct. 98 (1954). Thus, we need only determine if section 21.06 is related "to the pursuit" of implementing morality.

The United States Circuit Court for the Fifth Circuit has already held that 21.06 concerns issues of morality. Baker v. Wade, 769 F.2d 289, 292 (5th Cir. 1985). In reviewing section 21.06, that court held, "in view of the strong objection to homosexual conduct, which has prevailed in Western culture for the past seven centuries, we cannot say that section 21.06 is 'totally unrelated to the pursuit of,' implementing morality, a permissible state goal." (internal citations omitted). That is the same justification upon which the majority relies to reach the conclusion that the Texas Legislature was exercising valid legislative powers in enacting section 21.06. I agree that the justification is legally sound. It is not our duty to assess the wisdom or desirability of the law, see New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303, 49 L. Ed. 2d 511, 96 S. Ct. 2513 (1976), nor does "this court ... invalidate bad or foolish policies, only unconstitutional ones; we may not 'sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines.'" Id. As the majority states, "our power to review the moral justification for a legislative act is extremely limited."

Secondly, I concur with the majority in its rationale and holdings as to both the Equal Protection and Privacy sections of the opinion. I would only add that, as to whether section 21.06 unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of gender, it clearly does not. This is not merely because of the equal application of the statute to men and women, but because this statute does not contain a discriminatory classification based on gender.

The dissent contends that, like the statute struck down in Loving v. Virginia, this statute "equally punishes," in this case, based on gender classification, which makes the statute gender based. 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010 (1967). That argument is creative, but misguided. In Loving, the Court struck down a statute because the statute furthered a loathsome discrimination—racism that implied a "superior" white person marrying an "inferior" black person does so at the risk of both being punished. The Loving court correctly recognized that this was the kind of discriminatory law sought to be vanquished by the Fourteenth Amendment; one that advanced the fallacy of racial superiority. However, Loving is not on point in this case because section 21.06 does not advance the fallacy of gender superiority. It prohibits a same-sex sexual relationship. The fact that sexual orientation necessarily depends upon the sex of the parties does not mean that section 21.06 is the kind of statute that discriminates on the basis of gender. Gender is treated as an elevated class under the Fourteenth Amendment because this country saw a need to rid itself of outdated notions of a woman's inferiority to a man. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 30 L. Ed. 2d 225, 92 S. Ct. 251 (1971); Phillips v. Marietta Corp., 400 U.S. 542, 27 L. Ed. 2d 613, 91 S. Ct. 496 (1971); Seidenberg v. McSorleys' Old Ale House, Inc., 317 F. Supp. 593 (S.D.N.Y. 1970); Sail'er Inn, Inc. v. Kirby, 5 Cal. 3d 1, 485 P.2d 529, 95 Cal. Rptr. 329 (Cal. 1971). There is nothing in section 21.06 that furthers any unequal treatment between the sexes. The dissent's argument to the contrary is not a legally sustainable one.

Finally, I also take issue with the dissent's treatment of the majority's reliance on Bowers v. Hardwick. The dissent correctly points out that Bowers v. Hardwick deals with the Due Process Clause, while the majority's analysis depends upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The dissent remarks that "this blending of quite distinct elements of the Federal Constitution blunts the force of the majority's equal protection arguments." I disagree.

First, the dissent overlooks the fact that the ultimate analysis in both Bowers and this case turns on the application of the rational basis test. This test does not differ depending on whether it is applied in a "due process" or an "equal protection" context. The test remains the same: does the statute further some legitimate, articulated state purpose? Kadrmas v. Dickinson Pub. Sch., 487 U.S. 450, 461-62, 101 L. Ed. 2d 399, 108 S. Ct. 2481 (1988) (analyzing a Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection claim based on whether the statute at issue had a "rational relation to a legitimate government objective . . ."); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., 348 U.S. 483, 488, 99 L. Ed. 563, 75 S. Ct. 461, (1955) (analyzing a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process claim under the rational basis test by stating, ". . . to be constitutional, it is enough that there is an [issue] at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it."); see Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U.S. 78, 81, 30 L. Ed. 2d 231, 92 S. Ct. 254 (1971) (analyzing a Fifth Amendment Due Process claim using a rational basis test drawn from Equal Protection cases that stated the statute must be "rationally based and free from invidious discrimination . . ."). Bowers holds that states are within the scope of legislative authority—and further a legitimate state purpose—when their legislatures base laws on concepts of morality. Therefore, the application of Bowers does not "blunt[] the force of the majority's equal protection arguments." Secondly, the dissent charges that the majority merges Bowers' due process analysis with the equal protection issue in this case. That statement is incorrect. The majority cites Bowers only three times: (1) in reference to legislating on notions of morality; (2) in reference to the privacy issue; and (3) for the contention that sodomy was an offense in all fifty states and in the District of Columbia prior to 1961. The majority's analysis of whether section 21.06 should be subject to some level of heightened scrutiny in an equal protection analysis does not depend on the Bowers decision. The dissent's implication to the contrary is inaccurate.

/s/ Wanda McKee Fowler

Justice

Judgment rendered and Concurring Opinion filed March 15, 2001.

En banc.

DISSENTING OPINION

I respectfully dissent to the majority's Herculean effort to justify the discriminatory classification of section 21.06 of the Penal Code despite the clear prohibitions on such discrimination contained in the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution and the Texas Equal Rights Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution.

Appellants are before this court challenging the constitutionality of Texas Penal Code section 21.06. They bring four issues: (1) whether the statute violates the right to federal constitutional equal protection as applied and on its face; (2) whether the statute violates the right to state constitutional equal protection as applied and on its face; (3) whether the statute violates the appellants' right to privacy under the Texas Constitution; and (4) whether the statute violates the appellants' right to privacy under the United States Constitution.

I believe appellants' federal right to privacy challenge is controlled by the Supreme Court's determination in Bowers v. Hardwick. The Due Process Clause of the Federal Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct. 2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140 (1986). I would reach the same conclusion on appellants' privacy claim under the Texas Constitution. The Texas Supreme Court, borrowing heavily from Bowers, denied the existence of an asserted privacy right by insisting that adultery is "not a right implicit in the concept of liberty in Texas or deeply rooted in this state's history and tradition." Henry v. City of Sherman, 928 S.W.2d 464, 470 (Tex. 1996). "Because homosexual conduct is not a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, adultery, likewise, cannot be a fundamental right." Id. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority on appellants' third and fourth issues, but for the reasons set forth below, strongly disagree with the majority's treatment of appellants' state and federal equal protection arguments.

I.

Application of Equal Protection to

Section 21.06: An Overview

Appellants contend section 21.06 violates their rights of equal protection under the United States and Texas Constitutions. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the statute must fail because even applying the most deferential standard, the rational basis standard, the statute cannot be justified on the majority's sole asserted basis of preserving public morality, where the same conduct, defined as "deviate sexual intercourse" is criminalized for same sex participants but not for heterosexuals. The contention that the same conduct is moral for some but not for others merely repeats, rather than legitimizes, the Legislatures' unconstitutional edict. The statute must also fail because statutory classifications that are not gender neutral are analyzed under the heightened scrutiny standard of review, and there is no showing by the State either that there is an exceedingly persuasive justification for the classification, or that there is a direct, substantial relationship between the classification and the important government objectives it purports to serve.

Similarly, section 21.06 cannot withstand scrutiny under the Texas ERA, Article I, § 3a of the Texas Constitution. The ERA is part of the Texas Bill of Rights. Under Article I, § 29 of the Bill of Rights, the Inviolability Clause, statutes that contravene anything in the Bill of Rights are per se void. Because section 21.06 discriminates on the basis of gender, thus violating Article I, § 3a, it is void. Moreover, applying the less rigorous standard of strict scrutiny, mandated by McLean, produces the same result. In re McLean, 725 S.W.2d 696 (Tex. 1987). Under strict scrutiny as applied in Texas, the proponent of gender discrimination must demonstrate a compelling interest and that there is no other manner to protect the state's compelling interest. Id. This requirement places the burden to support the statute squarely upon the State and not on the challenger, and the State, as discussed here and in this Court's original opinion, has failed to make the required showing to defeat a challenge under the Texas ERA.

II.

Section 21.06 and the Fourteenth Amendment:

Equal Protection, Gender, and Heightened Scrutiny Review

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment commands that no State shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," which is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike. City of Cleburne, Tex. v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 439, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313, 105 S. Ct. 3249 (1985). The general rule is that legislation is presumed valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Id. However, within the three-tiered federal equal protection scheme, legislative classifications based on gender call for a heightened standard of review, one step below the most rigorous strict scrutiny review applied to statutory classifications based on race, alienage, or national origin. Id. Under the heightened standard, a gender classification fails unless it is substantially related to a sufficiently important governmental interest. Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1090, 102 S. Ct. 3331 (1982).

A. Section 21.06 Is Not Gender Neutral

In its analysis of appellants' gender discrimination contention, the majority attempts to transfer the burden of proof to appellants to show the statute has had an adverse effect upon one gender, and that such disproportionate impact can be traced to a discriminatory purpose. This transfer is based on the naked assertion that section 21.06 is gender-neutral because it does not impose burdens on one gender not shared by the other. That 21.06 is not gender neutral is manifest based on application of the statute to the following events:

There are three people in a room: Alice, Bob, and Cathy. Bob approaches Alice, and with her consent, engages with her in several varieties of "deviate sexual intercourse," the conduct at issue here. Bob then leaves the room. Cathy approaches Alice, and with her consent, engages with her in several kinds of "deviate sexual intercourse." Cathy is promptly arrested for violating section 21.06.

I have indulged in this tableau to demonstrate one important point: one person simply committed a sex act while another committed a crime. While the acts were exactly the same, the gender of the actors was different, and it was this difference alone that determined the criminal nature of the conduct. In other words, because he is a man, Bob committed no crime and may freely indulge his predilection for "deviate sexual intercourse," but because she is a woman, Cathy is a criminal. Thus, women are treated differently in this scenario, and therefore, are discriminated against by the explicit gender-based prohibition of section 21.06, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best. It is also no answer to insist that because the statute also subjects men to similar discrimination in different scenarios, somehow the discrimination here is rendered constitutionally acceptable. Discrimination in one instance is not cured by additional discrimination in another. Moreover, section 21.06 grew out of the revision of the penal code in 1973. In the new statute, two standards were created, demarcated by the sex of the actors: deviate sexual intercourse when performed by a man and a woman would henceforth be legal, but deviate sexual intercourse performed by two men or two women would remain illegal. Thus, after 1974, the distinction between legal and illegal conduct was clearly not the act, but rather the sex of one of the participants.

B. Equal Discrimination Argument Not A Cure

While not precisely a model of clarity, the majority appears to accept the State's contention that because section 21.06 applies equally to men and women, the statute does not discriminate on the basis of gender. I draw this conclusion based on the majority's rejection of appellants' argument that Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010, 87 S. Ct. 1817 (1967) discredited the "equal application" defense of 21.06, and conclusion that 21.06 does not impose burdens on one gender not shared by the other. However, the United States Supreme Court has rejected the majority's position in a variety of cases.

One example of the Court's rejection of the "equal discrimination" argument is found in United Bldg. and Const. Trades Council of Camden County and Vicinity v. Mayor and Council of City of Camden, 465 U.S. 208, 217-18, 79 L. Ed. 2d 249, 104 S. Ct. 1020 (1984). In that case, the Supreme Court invalidated a municipal ordinance in Camden, New Jersey, requiring that at least forty percent of employees working on city construction projects be city residents. Camden's Mayor and City Council argued the ordinance did not violate the strictures of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that out-of-state residents be afforded the same job opportunities as in-state residents, because not only out-of-state residents were burdened by the ordinance. In fact, the respondents argued, many in-state residents, who did not live within the city of Camden, were as burdened by the ordinance as the out-of-state workers who brought the suit. Rejecting the "equal discrimination" argument, the Supreme Court stated "the Camden ordinance is not immune from constitutional review at the behest of out-of-state residents merely because some in-state residents are similarly disadvantaged." Id. (citing Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55, 75, 72 L. Ed. 2d 672, 102 S. Ct. 2309 (1982) (O'Connor, J., concurring)).

A second example of the Court's rejection of additional "curative" discrimination is noted in Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222, 85 L. Ed. 2d 222, 105 S. Ct. 1916 (1985). In Hunter, the Court struck down a provision of the Alabama Constitution that mandated disenfranchisement for people who committed "crimes of moral turpitude." Although facially neutral, the Court determined the provision was enacted with the intent of discriminating against blacks and disparately impacted blacks as well because it had disenfranchised ten times as many blacks as whites. Id. at 227. Appellant, the State of Alabama, argued that although the constitutional provision was intended to discriminate against blacks, it did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because it was also intended to discriminate against poor whites. The Court held that the intention to additionally discriminate against whites "hardly saves [the Alabama provision] from invalidity." Id. at 231. An additional purpose to discriminate against poor whites would not render nugatory the purpose to discriminate against blacks. Id. at 232. Thus, again, the Court declined to accept additional discrimination as a purported cure for a clearly discriminatory law.

Finally, the Supreme Court discussed the logic of an argument analogous to the State's argument here in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010, 87 S. Ct. 1817 (1967). There, the State of Virginia argued that Virginia's miscegenation statutes do not constitute invidious racial discrimination because the statutes apply equally to whites and blacks. Id. at 8. The miscegenation statutes, the State contended, equally penalized both whites who intermarried and blacks who intermarried; therefore, the "equal application" of the statutes rendered them acceptable under the Fourteenth Amendment using a rational basis standard. Id. Rejecting this sophistry, the Court responded that the mere equal application of a statute containing racial classifications does not remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's proscription of all invidious racial discrimination. Id. By using the race of an individual as the sole determinant of the criminality of his conduct, the State created and perpetuated an invidious racial classification in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Loving, 388 U.S. at 11. Accordingly, the Court reaffirmed the propriety of strict scrutiny and struck down the Virginia statutes as unconstitutional. Id. at 12.

I would also reject the equal application argument offered here. Merely punishing men who engage in sodomy with other men and women who engage in sodomy with other women equally, neither salvages nor cures the discriminatory classification contained in this statute. The simple fact is, the same behavior is criminal for some but not for others, based solely on the sex of the individuals who engage in the behavior. In other words, the sex of the individual, not the conduct, is the sole determinant of the criminality of the conduct.

Indeed, the State's and the majority's utilization of the equal application justification for 21.06 detrimentally impacts their unified position. If in Loving the equal application of the anti-miscegenation statutes to both blacks and whites did not negate the existence of a racial classification, then here, equal application of the anti-homosexual-sodomy statute to both men and women does not negate the existence of a sex classification. Alternatively, if 21.06 does not contain a sex-based classification because it applies equally to men and women, then the anti-miscegenation statutes in Loving did not contain a race-based classification, with the logical corollary that Loving was wrongly decided. Here, the State and the majority go to great lengths to manufacture a conclusion that 21.06 is gender neutral. They must, because acknowledging the facial and as applied gender discrimination within 21.06 vitiates any defense of that statute inasmuch as the State has failed to establish either that the classification created by the statute is substantially related to important and legitimate government objectives, the test applied under heightened scrutiny, or identify a compelling state interest for purposes of strict scrutiny.

The issue regarding whether 21.06 is gender neutral lies at the core of this case. The majority, in a somewhat cursory fashion, dispenses with Loving and moves quickly to the conclusion of gender neutrality without addressing, among other things, the tableau set forth above in this part II. This conclusion of neutrality is essential for the majority to access the rational basis review, avoid heightened scrutiny mandated for gender discrimination, and most importantly, avoid any analysis of appellants' claims under the Texas ERA. However, limiting analysis of 21.06 to rational basis review is incomplete.

In an equal protection analysis of a legislative classification such as that drawn in 21.06, the appropriate framework for reviewing the scheme is to first ask whether the law survives rational basis analysis, and, if it does, the second inquiry is whether the distinction will pass heightened scrutiny. Hooper v. Bernalillo County Assessor, 472 U.S. 612, 618, 86 L. Ed. 2d 487, 105 S. Ct. 2862 (1985). Both Hooper and Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55, 72 L. Ed. 2d 672, 102 S. Ct. 2309 (1982) analyzed statutory classifications violating the Equal Protection Clause by deferring heightened scrutiny analysis until a determination is made that it survived a rational basis analysis. Attorney Gen. of New York v. Soto-Lopez, 476 U.S. 898, 904, 90 L. Ed. 2d 899, 106 S. Ct. 2317 (1986). Thus, here, because the majority has determined that 21.06 survives rational basis scrutiny, and fails to then apply heightened scrutiny review, its analysis under the Equal Protection Clause is incomplete. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855, 116 S. Ct. 1620 (1996) is consistent with this approach. There, because Amendment 2 was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause applying rational basis review, there was no need to examine the statute under heightened scrutiny. Thus, the majority's conclusion that 21.01 is gender neutral will not allow omission of heightened scrutiny review.

C. Standard of Review For Gender Discrimination

Inasmuch as section 21.06 is not gender-neutral, the next inquiry is determining the appropriate burden of proof and assigning that burden. In 1982, in Mississippi University for Women, the Court held that the party seeking to uphold a statute that classifies individuals on the basis of their gender must carry the burden of showing an "exceedingly persuasive justification" for the classification. 458 U.S. at 724. The burden is met only by showing, at a minimum, that the classification serves important governmental objectives. Id. There is, however, a further inquiry if the State's objective is legitimate and important. The reviewing court must then determine whether the requisite direct, substantial relationship between the objective sought and means used is present. Id. This is heightened scrutiny.

The Supreme Court again addressed the issue of whether the Equal Protection Clause forbids gender based discrimination in J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 128 L. Ed. 2d 89, 114 S. Ct. 1419 (1994). Specifically, the Court examined the use of peremptory challenges on the basis of gender under the dictates of the Equal Protection Clause and the court's holding in Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits peremptory strikes solely on the basis of race. 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986). The court held the Equal Protection Clause prohibits discrimination in jury selection on the basis of gender. J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 146. In reaching that conclusion, the J.E.B. Court acknowledged that "our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination," a history which warrants the heightened scrutiny afforded all gender-based classifications. Id.

In United States v Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533, 135 L. Ed. 2d 735, 116 S. Ct. 2264 (1996), the Supreme Court reiterated the burden of proof for cases of official classification based on gender as requiring the reviewing court to determine whether the proffered justification is exceedingly persuasive, and declared "the burden of justification is demanding and it rests entirely on the State." Further, the Court held that the justification must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation. Id. And, it must not rely on overbroad generalizations about different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females. Id. This is the heightened review standard applied to classifications based on sex. Id.

D. Failure to Satisfy the Heightened Scrutiny Standard

In its original brief filed with this court, the State contends that section 21.06 must be upheld if there is any rational relationship between the disparity of treatment reflected in that statute and a legitimate state interest. The State seeks to apply the general rule that legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 440. To satisfy the rational relationship burden, the State asserts the statute is rationally related to permissible governmental purposes, the discouragement of behavior historically perceived to be immoral, and the promotion of family values. This assertion was reiterated in the State's brief in support of its motion for rehearing en banc. The majority also adopts this rational relationship standard. The State's and the majority's arguments that 21.06 survives a challenge under federal equal protection are untenable.

First, the State and the majority have applied the wrong standard. As set out in City of Cleburne, the three standards of equal protection review, from highest to lowest, are strict scrutiny, heightened review, and rational relationship. 473 U.S. at 440-441. Under Heitman v. State, the court held that decisions of the Supreme Court represent the minimum protections that a state must afford its citizens. 815 S.W.2d 681, 690 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991). The federal constitution sets the floor for individual rights, and state constitutions cannot subtract from the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution; however, they can provide additional rights to their citizens. Id. It appears, therefore, that the State and the majority have attempted to apply a lower threshold standard of review to gender-based discrimination than the heightened standard mandated by the United States Supreme Court. It is not within the discretion of an intermediate court to ignore United States Supreme Court precedent regarding the appropriate standard of review for gender based classifications challenged, as appellants have done here, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court in Heitman stated the rule more succinctly: this court is not at liberty to reduce the protections afforded its citizens to a level less than that established under the federal constitution. 815 S.W.2d at 690. A fortiori, by applying the improper standard of review, the majority has accomplished the following: it has afforded appellants a level of protection less than that prescribed by courts whose opinions we are required to follow.

Second, the majority apparently has accepted the State's obfuscation of the issue of gender discrimination in 21.06, thus lowering the State's burden of proof. It is well established that a gender classification fails unless the party seeking to uphold the statute satisfies the dual burden of showing a persuasive justification or objective for the classification and that the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the objective. Mississippi Univ. for Women, 458 U.S. at 724-725. Where, as here, there is not even a whisper or hint in the majority opinion purporting to demonstrate how the State satisfied the minimum rational relationship showing required to sustain 21.06 in the face of an equal protection challenge, it is difficult to understand how the majority can conclude 21.06 does not violate appellants' federal equal protection rights.

E. Proper Application of Heightened Scrutiny Review

Turning now to the case sub judice, a rather succinct two part test exists for evaluating the validity of the gender-based classification in 21.06 against a federal equal protection challenge, and it is couched in terms of dual burdens on the proponent of the statute: (1) has the proponent demonstrated a legitimate and exceedingly persuasive justification for the gender based classification contained in 21.06; and (2) has the proponent demonstrated the requisite direct, substantial relationship between the classification and the important government objectives it purports to serve. Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728, 745, 79 L. Ed. 2d 646, 104 S. Ct. 1387 (1984).

(1). The justification asserted here for 21.06 is promotion of family values and discouragement of immoral behavior. At the outset, it should be noted that "promotion of family values" has not been defined by the State, but it is not illogical to assume that it has some relationship to the institution of marriage and procreation. Thus, the State's contention must be that permitting deviate sexual intercourse between heterosexual couples promotes family values while such conduct by same sex couples promotes something less than that. What is interesting to note is the fact that deviate sexual intercourse, as defined in section 21.01 of the Penal Code, regardless of the gender of one's sex partner, will not permit a female's ovum to be fertilized, thus creating a pregnancy. It must, therefore, be concluded that the State's acquiescence in heterosexual deviate sexual intercourse permits heterosexuals, whether married or not, to engage in a variety of historically repugnant "recreational sex" acts. To contend, as the State must, that a man somehow promotes family values by engaging in deviate sexual intercourse with a woman, but undermines those values by performing the same deviate sex act with a man, does not, in my view, constitute a showing of an exceedingly persuasive justification for the gender based classification in 21.06.

Nor does the asserted justification of discouraging immoral behavior constitute such a showing. The behavior to be discouraged is deviate sexual intercourse between same sex couples. That same behavior between heterosexual couples is, by implication, moral and something to be encouraged. Sodomy is either immoral or it is not. It appears that the State's vigorous defense of 21.06 has been advanced without due consideration of the inconsistency of, on the one hand, condemning sodomy as immoral, but on the other implicitly embracing sodomy as perfectly moral. Again, such incongruity is not exceedingly persuasive.

(2). Because the test articulated in Heckler is described in the conjunctive, it follows that if the State has failed to articulate a legitimate and exceedingly persuasive justification, we need not reach the second part of the test. Nevertheless, even if family values and prevention of immoral behavior were legitimate and persuasive justifications for the gender classification, the discussion above demonstrates there is no connection between penalizing homosexual sodomy and the achievement of those objectives. Neither heterosexual sodomy nor homosexual sodomy can create a new life. Further, encouraging heterosexual sodomy and punishing homosexual sodomy, as a Class C misdemeanor with a fine only, scuttles the State's asserted purpose of preventing immoral behavior inasmuch as 21.06 permits deviate sexual intercourse by any man with any woman. Thus, the State has failed to make a showing of how the gender-based classification is substantially and directly related to the proffered objective of discouraging immoral behavior. Perhaps this failure rests, in part, on the apparent impossibility of logically explaining how the classification in 21.06 is even remotely related to that objective where such behavior is simultaneously sanctioned and is presumably engaged in routinely. Where, as here, the proponent of a gender-based statutory classification fails to establish the requisite relationship between the objective and the means used to achieve it, the statute is invalid. See Mississippi Univ. for Women, 458 U.S. at 730.

The mere recitation of a benign purpose is not an automatic shield that protects against any inquiry into the actual purposes underlying a statutory scheme. Mississippi Univ. for Women, 458 U.S. at 728. Having performed the analysis dictated by intermediate scrutiny, it must be concluded the State failed both to articulate a persuasive justification and to demonstrate a direct relationship between the tendered objectives and the means utilized to achieve those objectives in 21.06. In the absence of legitimate objectives, the inevitable inference is raised that the disadvantage to homosexuals contained in 21.06 is born of animosity toward the persons affected. See Romer, 517 U.S. at 634. The Legislature's removal of the prohibition on heterosexual sodomy while retaining it for homosexual sodomy cannot, in my view, be explained by anything but animus toward the persons it affects.

Indeed, the State's purported justification for the classification in 21.06 in terms of upholding public morality founders on the distinction between public and private morality. The private morality of an individual is not synonymous with nor necessarily has an effect on what is known as public morality. The majority believes 21.06 preserves public morals. That conclusion is apparently reached sua sponte without the slightest showing by the State that such consequence flows from enforcement of 21.06. As set forth above, the State's general contention is that the statute discourages immoral behavior, without regard to the public or private nature thereof. Nevertheless, addressing the majority's contention, we are not told how government interference with the practice of adult only, consensual personal choice in matters of intimate sexual behavior out of view of the public and with no commercial component will serve to advance the cause of "public morality" or do anything other than restrict individual conduct and impose a concept of private morality chosen by the State. Here again, when one applies the clear test, articulated in Heckler and elsewhere, that a gender-based classification must fail an equal protection challenge absent a showing that the classification is substantially and directly related to the preservation of public morality, the conclusion is obvious. Perhaps this is the reason the majority labors so hard to conclude 21.06 is gender neutral.

III.

Equal Protection, Improper Classifications and Rational Basis Review

A. Romer v. Evans

I firmly believe 21.06 establishes a gender-based classification, on its face and as applied, in the Penal Code of the State of Texas that will not withstand middle tier scrutiny mandated for the analysis of such classifications under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Appellants, however, also challenge the statute because it unconstitutionally discriminates against homosexuals, thus imposing an unequal burden on them based on their sexual orientation because heterosexuals are not targeted by 21.06 when engaging in the same conduct. Here, the rational basis test, much preferred by the State, is applicable, but the result of a correct analysis applying federal precedent is contrary to the outcome sought by the State. The case that controls the disposition of appellants' contention that section 21.06 discriminates against a class based on sexual orientation is Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855, 116 S. Ct. 1620 (1996). In Romer, the United States Supreme Court held that a Colorado constitutional amendment (Amendment 2) prohibiting official protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Using a rational basis standard of review, the most deferential test, the Court invalidated Amendment 2 which (1) contained a classification of "homosexuals," and (2) withdrew from homosexuals, but no others, legal protection from discrimination and prohibited reinstatement of these laws and policies. See id. at 627.

The primary rationale advanced by the State for Amendment 2, adverted to in the opinion, was respect for other citizens' freedom of association, and, in particular, the liberties of landlords or employers who have personal or religious objections to homosexuality. Id. at 635. In striking down Amendment 2, the Court stated, that "equal protection of the laws is not achieved through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities." Id. at 633. The inequality the Court detected was that homosexuals were singled out by Amendment 2 and accorded less protection of the law solely by virtue of their membership in the class. Id. at 635. Although the Court utilized a rational basis standard for its analysis, Amendment 2 still failed this most deferential standard because the Court found the amendment advanced no legitimate government interest. Id. Thus, the Romer Court concluded Amendment 2 classified homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end, but to make them unequal to everyone else. Id.

Interestingly, Petitioner, the State of Colorado, offered other justifications for Amendment 2 similar to those offered by the State here. In Romer, the State argued the "legitimate governmental interests" of Amendment 2 were the promotion of traditional moral norms and family values. See Petitioner's Brief at 45-47, Romer (1995 WL 310026). Specifically, the State posited the amendment fostered "family privacy and the ability to convey values to their children," by disallowing the "implicit endorsement of homosexuality fostered by laws granting special protections [that] could undermine the efforts of some parents to teach traditional moral values," and deterred factionalism within the state by "maximizing individual liberty, including the preservation of traditional norms." Id.

Far from accepting these justifications as legitimate, the Court apparently did not find they even merited review in the opinion. Thus, the Court, sub silentio, rejected the "implementation of traditional notions of morality" justification deemed sufficient in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. at 196, and Baker v. Wade, 769 F.2d 289, 292 (5th Cir. 1985), both of which are relied upon by the State here. In Romer, the Supreme Court focused, instead, upon the animus apparent from a provision that drew a classification "for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law." 517 U.S. at 633. Because Amendment 2 drew such a classification, and then proceeded to disadvantage homosexuals because of their membership in the class, the amendment violated the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The statute at issue here, much like Amendment 2, draws a classification for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law. In fact, Justice Scalia, in his dissent to Romer readily agreed that, "here can hardly be more palpable discrimination against a class than making the conduct that defines the class criminal." Id. at 641. I agree with Justice Scalia that the statute at issue here, by proscribing "deviate sexual intercourse" only when engaged in with members of one's own sex, does discriminate against homosexuals. However, following Romer, I view the justifications proffered by the State, enforcement of traditional norms of morality and family values, as nothing more than politically-charged, thinly-veiled, animus-driven cliches. Section 21.06 is, like Amendment 2, a status-based enactment divorced from any factual context from which one can discern a relationship to legitimate state interests; it is a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit. Id. at 635. Although a state's police powers are broad and comprehensive, the constitution, both state and federal, "forbids its exercise when the result would be the destruction of the rights, guarantees, privileges, and restraints excepted from the powers of government by the Bill of Rights." Fazekas v. University of Houston, 565 S.W.2d 299, 305 (Tex. Civ. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1978, writ ref'd n.r.e.) (citing Travelers' Ins. Co. v. Marshall, 124 Tex. 45, 76 S.W.2d 1007 (1934)). Thus, stripped of its asserted justifications, the classification drawn in 21.06 is arbitrary and irrational, and fails the rational basis test.

Regarding appellants' issue on sexual orientation discrimination aspect of 21.06, the majority, inter alia, concludes there is no fundamental right to engage in sodomy, and homosexuals do not constitute a suspect class. These two conclusions are irrelevant here because appellants do not raise these arguments, and the first conclusion implicates Bowers v. Hardwick where equal protection was not argued or addressed.

B.

City of Cleburne

Legislation containing a classification challenged under the Equal Protection Clause must, in order to withstand rational basis review, be rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 446. The State may not rely, however, on a classification whose relationship to an asserted goal is so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational. Zobel, 457 U.S. at 61-63. Objectives such as a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group are not legitimate State interests. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 447.

InCity of Cleburne, the Court struck down a city zoning ordinance requiring a special use permit for a home for the mentally retarded, but exempting from such a permit apartment houses, fraternity houses, apartment hotels, hospitals, private clubs and other specified uses. Id. Plainly stated, the equal protection issue there presented was: "May the city require the permit for this facility when other care and multiple dwelling facilities are freely permitted?" City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448. The Federal District Court had found, and the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court repeated the obvious fact that if the potential residents of the home for the mentally retarded were not in fact so afflicted, and the home was the same in all other respects, its use would be authorized under the zoning ordinance. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 449.

The city presented several bases supporting the ordinance: fear and negative attitudes by residents living near the facility; location of the home in a five hundred year flood plain; the size of the home and the number of people who would occupy it. The City of Cleburne Court demonstrated how each factor presented by the city made no sense in light of how the city treated other groups similarly situated in relevant respects.City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448-450. Because none of the asserted bases rationally justified singling out a home for the retarded for the special use permit, while imposing no such restrictions on other uses freely permitted in the neighborhood, the Supreme Court concluded:

Requiring the permit in this case appears to us to rest on an irrational prejudice against the mentally retarded, including those who would occupy the [home] and who would live under the closely supervised and highly regulated conditions expressly provided for by state and federal law. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 450.

Applying the City of Cleburne rational basis review here, because the State's grounds purporting to justify 21.06 do not rationally justify criminalizing same sex sodomy while imposing no such burden on others engaging in acts defined as deviate sexual intercourse, the classification is arbitrary and irrational and driven by prejudice. It makes no sense for the State to contend that morals are preserved by criminalizing homosexual sodomy while supporting sodomy by heterosexual couples, including unmarried persons. The State simply may not rely on a classification whose relationship to an asserted goal is so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational. Zobel, 457 U.S. at 61-63. Where, as here, the State interest of preserving morality is irrational in light of authorization of the same immoral acts by others, the statute fails rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause and should be held in violation of the United States Constitution. Heller v. Doe by Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 324, 125 L. Ed. 2d 257, 113 S. Ct. 2637 (1993) (stating a statutory classification fails rational basis review when it rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to achievement of the state's objective).

The majority's discussion of the historical definitions of sodomy, which includes a reference to a seventeenth century law of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, suggests that homosexuals have been subjected to a tradition of disfavor. In his concurring opinion in City of Cleburne, Justice Stevens, joined by Chief Justice Burger, distanced himself from the tiered analysis of equal protection claims because, he believed, the rational basis test is suitable for all such inquiries. 473 U.S. at 452. In every equal protection case, he wrote, we have to ask certain basic questions: What class is harmed by the legislation, and has it been subjected to a "tradition of disfavor" by our laws? City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 453. In a footnote to this question, Justice Stevens stated the following:

The Court must be especially vigilant in evaluating the rationality of any classification involving a group that has been subjected to a tradition of disfavor [for] a traditional classification is more likely to be used without pausing to consider its justification than is a newly created classification. Habit, rather than analysis, makes it seem acceptable and natural to distinguish between male and female, alien and citizen, legitimate and illegitimate; for too much of our history there was the same inertia in distinguishing between black and white. But that sort of stereotyped reaction may have no rational relationship—other than pure prejudicial discrimination—to the stated purpose for which the classification is made. Id. at n.6.

Because the State has not shown a valid state interest for 21.06 that is rationally served by proscribing sodomy only when performed by homosexuals, the unavoidable conclusion is that the statute was merely a continuation of the stereotyped reaction to a traditionally disfavored group. By its unquestioning acceptance of the State's justification for the statute, the majority has overlooked the illegitimate stereotyping lying at the core of 21.06.

C.

Judge Norris, concurring in Watkins v. U.S. Army, 875 F.2d 699, 720 (9th Cir. 1989), captured, in my view, the core rationale underlying the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He wrote that the equal protection doctrine does not prevent the majority from enacting laws based on its substantive value choices. Equal protection simply requires that the majority apply its values evenhandedly. Id. Indeed, the equal protection doctrine plays an important role in perfecting, rather than frustrating, the democratic process. The constitutional requirement of evenhandedness advances the political legitimacy of majority rule by safeguarding minorities from majoritarian oppression. Id.

Therefore, I would hold section 21.06 violates the Equal Protection Clause based on appellants' contentions that it discriminates based on both gender and sexual orientation. Accordingly, I would sustain appellants' first point of error challenging 21.06 on federal equal protection grounds, as applied and on its face.

IV.

Section 21.06 and The Texas Equal Rights Amendment

Appellants also challenge 21.06 contending it violates Article I, § 3a of the Texas Constitution in that it proscribes otherwise lawful behavior solely on the basis of the sex of the participants. That provision of the Texas Bill of Rights provides as follows:

Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. This amendment is self-operative.

In my opinion, there are two standards by which review of section 21.06 may be made in the face of a challenge under the Texas ERA. The first is a per se rule based on the mandate of Article I, § 29 of the Texas Bill of Rights, and the second is strict scrutiny under the guidance of In re McLean, 725 S.W.2d 696 (Tex. 1987).

A. Per Se Rule

Article I, § 29 of the Texas Bill of Rights states the following rule regarding the power of the state government to usurp any of the rights contained in Article I of the Texas Constitution:

To guard against transgressions of the high powers herein delegated, we declare that everything in this 'Bill of Rights' is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate, and all laws contrary thereto, or to the following provisions, shall be void.

Section 29 has been interpreted as follows: any provision of the Bill of Rights is self-executing to the extent that anything done in violation of it is void. City of Beaumont v. Bouillion, 896 S.W.2d 143, 148-149 (Tex. 1995). When a law conflicts with rights guaranteed by Article I, the constitution declares that such acts are void because the Bill of Rights is a limit on State power. Id. at 149. Indeed, the Bill of Rights consists of express limitations of power on the legislature, executive officers, and the judiciary. Republican Party of Texas v. Dietz, 940 S.W.2d 86, 90 (Tex. 1997) (citing Travelers' Ins. Co. v. Marshall, 124 Tex. 45, 76 S.W.2d 1007 (Tex. 1934)). The framers of the Texas Constitution articulated what they intended to be the means of remedying a constitutional violation: a law contrary to a constitutional provision is void. Bouillion, 896 S.W.2d at 149.

Thus, while the State, in the exercise of its police powers, may enact legislation reasonably tending to promote the health, comfort or welfare of the public, the extent of this power is limited and must be exercised in conformance with the limitations prescribed by the constitution. Faulk v. Buena Vista Burial Park Ass'n, 152 S.W.2d 891, 891-95 (Tex. Civ. App.—El Paso 1941, no writ); see also Villarreal v. State, 935 S.W.2d 134, 139 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996) (McCormick, P.J., concurring) (characterizing dissent's approach to "privacy expectation" analysis as coming "perilously close to subjecting our constitutional rights too closely to majoritarian political processes and temporary passions of the moment, which is inconsistent with the idea underlying the Bill of Rights.").

Therefore, when the equality guaranteed by the Texas ERA is viewed through the prism of the Texas "Inviolability Clause," it becomes clear that section 21.06, as a non-gender neutral classification created by the legislature in violation of Article I, § 3a, is void.

B. Strict Scrutiny Under In re McLean

Before examining the precise manner in which the McLean court analyzed a statute that discriminated on the basis of sex, it is informative to review what that court had to say about the meaning of the Texas ERA.

The McLean court declined to give the Texas ERA an interpretation identical to that given state and federal due process and equal guarantees. 725 S.W.2d at 697. Both the United States Constitution and the Texas Constitution had due process and equal protection guarantees before the ERA was adopted in Texas in 1972. Id. If the due process and equal protection provisions and the ERA are given identical interpretations, then the 1972 amendment, adopted by a four to one margin by Texas voters, was an exercise in futility. Id. Thus, the McLean court concluded the Equal Rights Amendment is more extensive and provides more specific protection than both the United States and Texas due process and equal protection guarantees. McLean, 725 S.W.2d at 698. The McLean court did not, however, adopt a per se standard, but instead concluded the Texas ERA elevated sex to a suspect class, thus subjecting any gender discrimination to strict scrutiny, placing the burden on the proponent of the discriminatory provision to demonstrate a compelling interest, and that there is no other manner to protect the state's compelling interest. Id. (citing Mercer v. Board of Trust., North Forest Indep. Sch. Dist., 538 S.W.2d 201, 206 (Tex. Civ. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1976, writ ref'd n.r.e.) (holding any classification based on sex is suspect classification; thus any law or regulation classifying persons for different treatment on basis of their sex is subject to strictest judicial scrutiny)). The Austin Court of Appeals has also concluded the Equal Rights Amendment elevates sex to a suspect class, thereby invoking strict scrutiny review when a law differentiates on the basis of gender. Lens Express, Inc. v. Ewald, 907 S.W.2d 64, 69 (Tex. App.—Austin 1995, no writ).

Neither the State nor the majority have applied the strict scrutiny mandated by McLean and Mercer. Nevertheless, that standard must be applied. McLean established a two step process for examining a statute challenged as a violation of the ERA. The first step is to determine whether equality under the law has been denied. 725 S.W.2d at 697. That first inquiry is relatively simple. The denial of equality here was under the law because appellants were prosecuted under 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code. In McLean, the court held that because disparate treatment of an illegitimate child's father and mother was required by a statute in the Texas Family Code, the denial of equality was under the law. Id.

The second inquiry is whether equality was denied because of a person's membership in a protected class of sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. Id. As I have discussed above in connection with the analysis of appellants' federal equal protection challenge to 21.06, it is manifest on the face of that statute it is the gender of the particular actors that serves as the trigger for 21.06's prohibitions, so that discussion need not be repeated here. Thus, addressing the second part of the McLean test, the focus is on whether the discrimination in 21.06 is prohibited by the ERA. Id. Sex-based discrimination is allowed to co-exist with the ERA only when the proponent of the discrimination can prove there is no other manner to protect the state's compelling interest. Id. Surprisingly, counsel for the State conceded at oral argument that he could not "even see how he could begin to frame an argument that there was a compelling State interest," much less demonstrate that interest for this Court. The State did offer, however, what it characterized as legitimate purposes for the statute: enforcement of principles of morality and promotion of family values.

It is simply not enough for the State to say it has an important interest furthered by the discriminatory law. McLean, 725 S.W.2d at 698. Even the loftiest goal does not justify sex-based discrimination in light of the clear constitutional prohibition contained in the Texas ERA. Id. Strict scrutiny is not satisfied until the State has met a two part test: articulation of a compelling state interest, and a showing that there is no other manner to protect the state's compelling interest. Id. Thus, even accepting the morality and family values bases supporting the discrimination as compelling state interests, there is no showing here that there is no other manner of protecting morality and family values other than prosecuting same sex sodomy. It would appear that the state's goal of protecting these interests was originally achieved on a non-discriminatory basis when the prohibition of sodomy applied to all persons. See n.8, supra. There are other avenues for achieving the State's objectives without resorting to 21.06 as pointed out by the court in Onofre. See n.13, supra. It is manifestly illogical to suggest that sodomy, when performed by heterosexuals promotes morality and family values, and that the same acts when performed by same sex couples, denigrates morality and family values.

As noted above, implicitly rejecting "morality" and "family values" as justifications for Colorado's discriminatory constitutional amendment, the United States Supreme Court struck down the amendment under a rational basis standard. See n.12, supra. Logic dictates that if the promotion of morality norms and family values as rationalizations for state sponsored discrimination will not pass a rational basis standard of review, such contentions would wilt in the face of strict scrutiny mandated by McLean. I conclude, therefore, that because the State has not shown there are no alternate means to protect the State's asserted interests of family values and morality other than through the gender-based discrimination in 21.06, the statute violates Article I, § 3a of the Texas Constitution and is, therefore, void. See TEX. CONST. Art. I, § 29.

Accordingly, I would sustain appellant's point of error two challenging 21.06 under the Texas ERA.

V.

Conclusion

Analyzed correctly under binding Supreme Court precedent, Texas Penal Code section 21.06 is in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution because it is neither rationally related to the legitimate State objective presented for its support, nor viable under heightened scrutiny because the State failed to articulate a compelling interest served by the gender discrimination exhibited by 21.06 on its face and as applied. Further, under the Texas Bill of Rights, because the gender discrimination in 21.06 contravenes the Equal Rights Amendment, it is automatically void without regard to any justification.

The holding here that 21.06 is unconstitutional is not tantamount to a conclusion that there is nothing wrong with the prohibited conduct. The majority correctly states that mere disagreement with the Legislature over whether the conduct proscribed by 21.06 is or is not a bad deed is not a basis for overturning a statute. This statement, however, is incomplete because it ignores the duty a judge has when confronted by a statute in conflict with the constitution.

The courts may declare legislative enactments unconstitutional and void in some cases, but not because the judicial power is superior in degree or dignity to the legislative. Being required to declare what the law is in the cases which come before them, they must enforce the constitution as the paramount law, whenever a legislative enactment comes in conflict with it. In exercising this high authority, the judges claim no judicial supremacy; they are only the administrators of the public will [expressed in the constitution]. If an act of the legislature is held void, it is not because the judges have any control over the legislative power, but because the act is forbidden by the constitution, and because the will of the people, which is therein declared, is paramount to that of their representatives expressed in any law. Ex parte Rodriguez, 39 Tex. 705, 751 (1873).

The Texas Constitution does not protect morality; it does, however, guarantee equality to all persons under the law. TEX. CONST. art. I, § 3a. My personal views on the conduct involved here are irrelevant to the outcome that I believe is required. The foregoing is my duty in the preparation of opinions because Cannon 3B(5) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct requires a judge to "perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice." Thus, the result reached in this dissent is purely a function of the application of the Texas and Federal Constitutions to section 21.06, and nothing more. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

/s/ John S. Anderson

Justice

Dissenting Opinion filed March 15, 2001.

En Banc.

Back to the Table of Contents

MILESTONES IN THE LAW

In the Supreme Court of the United States

John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, Petitioners

v.

State of Texas, Respondent.

On Writ Of Certiorari To The Court Of Appeals Of Texas Fourteenth District

BRIEF OF PETITIONERS

Paul M. Smith

William M. Hohengarten

Daniel Mach

Sharon M. McGowan

JENNER & BLOCK, LLC

601 13th Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20005

(202) 639-6000

Mitchell Katine

WILLIAMS, BIRNBERG & ANDERSEN, L. L.P.

6671 Southwest Freeway, Suite 303

Houston, Texas 77074

(713) 981-9595

Ruth E. Harlow

Counsel of Record

LAMBDA LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND, INC.

120 Wall Street, Suite 1500

New York, NY 10005

(212) 809-8585

Counsel for Petitioners

Table of Contents

QUESTIONS PRESENTED [xxx]

OPINIONS AND ORDERS BELOW [xxx]

JURISDICTION [xxx]

STATUTORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS [xxx]

STATEMENT OF THE CASE [xxx]

• A. Petitioners’ Arrests, Convictions, and Appeals [xxx]
• B. The Homosexual Conduct Law [xxx]

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT [xxx]

ARGUMENT [xxx]

I. Section 21.06 Violates Constitutional Rights to Liberty and Privacy Possessed by All Americans [xxx]

• A. American Adults Have Fundamental Liberty and Privacy Interests in Making Their Own Choices About Private, Consensual Sexual Relations [xxx]
• 1. Well-Established Protections for Intimate Relationships, Bodily Integrity, and the Privacy of the Home Converge in This Vital Freedom [xxx]
• 2. There Is No Constitutional Exception to Liberty for Gay and Lesbian Citizens [xxx]
• 3. Objective Considerations Support Recognition of Fundamental Interests Here [xxx]
• B. Texas Cannot Justify Section 21.06’s Criminal Prohibition of Petitioners’ and Other Adults’ Private Sexual Intimacy [xxx]
• C. Bowers Should Not Block Recognition and Enforcement of These Fundamental Interests [xxx]

II. Section 21.06 Discriminates Without Any Legitimate and Rational Basis, Contrary to the Guarantee of Equal Protection [xxx]

• A. Section 21.06’s Classification Is Not Rationally Related to Any Legitimate Purpose and Serves Only the Illegitimate Purpose of Disadvantaging One Group [xxx]
• B. The Broader Realities Reinforce This Law’s Affront to Core Principles of Equal Protection [xxx]
• 1. The Homosexual Conduct Law Brands Gay Persons As Second-Class Citizens and Licenses Wide-Ranging Discrimination Against Them [xxx]
• 2. The Homosexual Conduct Law Reflects and Helps Fuel a Continuing History of Discrimination Against Gay Americans [xxx]
• C. Equal Protection Concerns Are Particularly Strong Here Because of the Personal Burdens Imposed by This Criminal Law [xxx]

CONCLUSION [xxx]

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether Petitioners’ criminal convictions under the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law—which criminalizes adult, consensual same-sex intimate behavior, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples—violate the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws?

2. Whether Petitioners’ criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

3. Whether Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), should be overruled?

BRIEF OF PETITIONERS

The State of Texas arrested Petitioners Lawrence and Garner, charged them with a crime, and convicted them under the State’s "Homosexual Conduct" law for engaging in consensual same-sex intimacy in the privacy of Lawrence’s home. The Texas law and Petitioners’ convictions are constitutionally indefensible for two reasons. First, the law discriminates without a legitimate and rational State purpose, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In 1973, Texas broke with both the evenhanded laws of the past and the decisive modern trend toward decriminalization. Instead, the State chose to criminalize consensual, adult sexual behaviors only for those whose partners are of the same sex—gay men and lesbians. Texas’s decision to classify along that line brands gay men and lesbians as lawbreakers and fuels a whole range of further discrimination, effectively relegating them to a form of second-class citizenship. Second, this criminal law directly implicates fundamental interests in intimate relationships, bodily integrity, and the home. Texas’s law and the few other remaining consensual sodomy statutes—both those that discriminate and those that do not—trample on the substantive liberty protections that the Constitution erects in order to preserve a private sphere shielded from government intrusion. Here, where the State authorizes such intrusion into the homes and lives only of samesex couples, the constitutional injury is especially clear and disturbing.

OPINIONS AND ORDERS BELOW

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ orders refusing discretionary review are unreported. Pet. App. 1a, 2a. The decision of the en banc Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas is reported at 41 S.W.3d 349. Pet. App. 4a. The court’s prior panel opinion is unreported. Pet. App. 80a. The judgments of the Harris County Criminal Court are unreported. Pet. App. 107a, 109a.

JURISDICTION

The judgment of the Court of Appeals was entered on March 15, 2001. Pet. App. 3a. On April 17, 2002, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a timely consolidated petition for discretionary review. Pet. App. 1a, 2a. Petitioners filed their timely petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court on July 16, 2002. This Court’s jurisdiction rests on 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a).

STATUTORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS

Texas Penal Code § 21.06 ("Homosexual Conduct") provides: "(a) A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. (b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor."

Texas Penal Code § 21.01(1) provides: "'Deviate sexual intercourse' means: (A) any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person; or (B) the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object."

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides, in relevant part: "No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

A. Petitioners' Arrests, Convictions, And Appeals.

Late in the Evening of September 17, 1998, Harris County, Texas, sheriff's officers entered John Lawrence's home and there intruded on Lawrence and Tyron Garner having sex. The officers were responding to a false report of a "weapons disturbance." Pet. App. 129a, 141a. They arrested petitioners, jailed them, and did not release them from custody until the next day. Clerk's Record in State v. Lawrence, at 3 ("C.R.L."); Clerk's Record in State v. Garner, at 3 ("C.R.G.").

The State charged Petitioners with violating the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" statute, Tex. Pen. Code § 21.06 (the "Homosexual Conduct Law" or "Section 21.06"), which criminalizes so-called "deviate sexual intercourse" with another person of the same sex, but not identical conduct by different-sex couples. Id. The sole facts alleged by the State to make out a violation were that each Petitioner "engage[d] in deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Pet. App. 127a, 139a. The State did not allege that the conduct was public, non-consensual, with a minor, or in exchange for money. Id. The charges rested solely on consensual, adult sexual relations with a partner of the same sex in the privacy of Lawrence's home. Id.

After proceedings and initial convictions in the Justice of the Peace Court, Petitioners appealed for a trial de novo to the Harris County Criminal Court. C.R.L. 15; C.R.G. 12. They filed motions to quash the charges on the ground that the law violates the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and privacy, both on its face and as applied to their "consensual, adult, private sexual relations with another person of the same sex." Pet. App. 117a-118a, 121a-122a, 130a-131a, 134a-135a. On December 22, 1998, the court denied the motions to quash. Pet. App. 113a. Lawrence and Garner then pled nolo contendere, Pet. App. 114a, preserving, under Texas procedural rules, their right to pursue previously asserted defenses. Tex. Code Crim. P. § 44.02. The court imposed on each a fine of $200 and court costs of $141.25. Pet. App. 107a-108a, 109a-110a, 116a.

In consolidated appeals to the Texas Court of Appeals, Lawrence and Garner argued that Section 21.06 impermissibly discriminates between citizens "[u]nder any characterization of the classification." Amended Brief of Appellants at 4, 5, 6-17 (Tex. App. filed Apr. 30, 1999) ("Am. Br."); Additional Brief of Appellants 1 n.1, 14-22 (Tex. App. filed Aug. 11, 2000) ("Add'l Br."); Petition for Discretionary Review at 7-13 (Tex. Crim. App. filed Apr. 13, 2001) ("Pet. Disc. Rev."). Petitioners also argued that the statute invades their right of privacy and preserved their contention that Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was wrongly decided. Am. Br. 5, 23-26; Add'l Br. 23 n.20; Pet. Disc. Rev. 16-19.

At oral argument in the Court of Appeals, counsel for the State conceded that "he could not 'even see how he could begin to frame an argument that there was a compelling State interest'" served by Section 21.06. Pet. App. 76a (quoting counsel for Texas). Texas has repeatedly identified its only aim as "enforcement of principles of morality and the promotion of family values." See, e.g., State's Brief in Support of Rehearing En Banc 16 (Tex. App. filed Aug. 23, 2000) ("States' Br. in Supp. of Reh'g En Banc").

On June 8, 2000, a panel of the Court of Appeals reversed Petitioners' convictions under the Texas Equal Rights Amendment, holding that Section 21.06 impermissibly discriminates on the basis of sex. Pet. App. 86a-92a. After rehearing en banc, the Court of Appeals reinstated Petitioners' convictions on March 15, 2001. Pet. App. 3a, 4a. Citing Bowers, the court rejected Petitioners' substantive due process claim. Pet. App. 24a-31a. As to the federal equal protection claim, the court held that the statute was subject to and survived rational basis review, because it "advances a legitimate state interest, namely, preserving public morals." Pet. App. 13a. The court distinguished Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), as limited to discrimination in the right to seek legislation. Pet. App. 14a-15a.

Two Justices of the appellate court "strongly" dissented from the rejection of Petitioners' federal equal protection arguments. Pet. App. 42a. The dissent reasoned that:where the same conduct, defined as "deviate sexual intercourse[,]" is criminalized for same sex participants but not for heterosexuals[,] [t]he contention that the same conduct is moral for some but not for others merely repeats, rather than legitimizes, the Legislature's unconstitutional edict.Pet. App. 44a. Petitioners timely sought discretionary review from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which was refused. Pet. App. 1a, 2a.

B. The Homosexual Conduct Law

The Homosexual Conduct Law is of comparatively recent vintage. It was enacted in 1973 when Texas repealed all of its then-existing laws that criminalized private sexual conduct between consenting adults. See 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 399, §§ 1, 3. Prior to that time, the criminality of consensual sexual conduct in Texas did not depend on whether a couple was same sex or different-sex. In particular, oral as well as anal sex was a crime for all. 1943 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 112, § 1. See generally Baker v. Wade, 553 F. Supp. 1121, 1148-53 (N.D. Tex. 1982) (reviewing history of Texas sodomy laws), rev'd, 769 F.2d 289 (5th Cir. 1985) (en banc). Until 1973 Texas also criminalized fornication and adultery. See Tex. Pen. Code arts. 499-504 (1952) (repealed by 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws, ch. 399, § 3).

The 1973 repeals abolished all those crimes, 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 399, § 3, freeing heterosexual adult couples, married or unmarried, to engage in all forms of consensual, private, noncommercial sexual intimacy without state intrusion. In the same enactment, however, the Legislature adopted Section 21.06, see id. § 1, which for the first time singled out same-sex couples for criminal sanctions. Section 21.06 applies to "deviate sexual intercourse," which is defined as oral, anal, and certain other sexual conduct without regard to whether the actors are of the same or different sexes. See Tex. Pen. Code § 21.01(1). But "deviate sexual intercourse" is not a crime when engaged in privately by two consenting adults of different sexes. Rather, Section 21.06 criminalizes only "Homosexual Conduct," making it a punishable offense to engage in "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex," but not identical conduct by heterosexual couples. Tex. Pen. Code § 21.06.

Texas, of course, also has and enforces other laws that criminalize sexual conduct that takes place in public, Tex. Pen. Code §§ 21.07(a)(2), 21.08, that is violent or without consent, id. § 22.011(a)(1), that is in exchange for money, id. § 43.02, or that is committed with a minor, id. §§ 22.011(a)(2), 21.11. All of these prohibitions apply without regard to whether the actors are of the same or different sexes. Section 21.06, in contrast, applies to non-commercial, consensual, private sexual conduct between two adults—but only if they are of the same sex.

Because it singles out same-sex couples, this Texas law is unlike older legal prohibitions of "sodomy," see infra Point I.A.3, and differs fundamentally from the facially evenhanded Georgia law considered by the Court in Bowers, see 478 U.S. at 188 n.1. The Homosexual Conduct Law was substituted for a facially nondiscriminatory law at a time when many States, prompted by changing views about the proper limits of government power that were reflected in the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, were revising their criminal codes and completely abandoning offenses like fornication and sodomy. See Model Penal Code and Commentaries §§ 213.2 cmt. 2, 213.6 note (1980). By 1986, 26 States had invalidated their sodomy laws. Bowers, 478 U.S. at 193-94. Today, only nine States retain criminal laws that bar consensual sodomy for all. Between 1969 and 1989, Texas and seven other States legislatively replaced general laws with laws targeting homosexual couples. See infra at 21-22 & note 15. Four of those discriminatory laws have already been judicially invalidated, and one has been repealed. See id. Now only Texas and two other States criminalize same-sex conduct but not identical different-sex conduct by statute, while one other State has reached the same result through judicial construction of a facially evenhanded law.Similarly, all but a few States have repealed criminal laws prohibiting fornication. Infra note 18.

Since its enactment, Section 21.06 has narrowly survived several federal and state constitutional challenges. In Baker v. Wade, a federal district court held that Section 21.06 violates the constitutional rights of privacy and equal protection. 553 F. Supp. at 1125. The court rejected the State's claimed justifications for Section 21.06 and found that, even when not enforced, the law results in serious harms to gay persons, including employment discrimination. Id. at 1130, 1146-47. Although the Texas Attorney General withdrew the State's appeal, a divided en banc Fifth Circuit allowed an appeal by an intervenor and reversed, citing the summary affirmance in Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney, 425 U.S. 901 (1976). Baker v. Wade, 769 F.2d 289, 292 (5th Cir. 1985) (en banc).

In the early 1990s, Texas Courts of Appeals declared Section 21.06 unconstitutional in two cases exercising state equity jurisdiction. City of Dallas v. England, 846 S.W.2d 957 (Tex. App. 1993); State v. Morales, 826 S.W.2d 201 (Tex. App. 1992), rev'd on jurisdictional grounds, 869 S.W.2d 941 (Tex. 1994). In both cases, the intermediate appellate court struck down the Homosexual Conduct Law under the Texas Constitution and found that the statute inflicted severe harms beyond the direct threat of criminal convictions. See England, 846 S.W.2d at 959; Morales, 826 S.W.2d at 202. As the State itself stipulated in Morales, Section 21.06 "brands lesbians and gay men as criminals and thereby legally sanctions discrimination against them in a variety of ways unrelated to the criminal law." Id. at 202-03.

In 1994, Morales was set aside by the Texas Supreme Court as reaching beyond the power of the State's equity courts. 869 S.W.2d at 943-47. The court ruled that constitutional review should occur in the context of a criminal prosecution, with final review in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Id.In the present criminal case, however, the Court of Criminal Appeals refused to exercise its jurisdiction to review the validity of the law, Pet. App. 1a, 2a, leaving its burdens in effect throughout Texas.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

As the experience of Lawrence and Garner vividly illustrates, Section 21.06 puts the State of Texas inside its citizens' homes, policing the details of their most intimate and private physical behavior and dictating with whom they may share a profound part of adulthood. Texas has enacted and enforced a criminal law that takes away—from same-sex couples only—the freedom to make their own decisions, based upon their own values and relationships, about the forms of private, consensual sexual intimacy they will engage in or refrain from. The State defends this law only by saying the majority wants it so. Texas asserts a power of the majority to free itself from state dictates about private, consensual sexual choices, while using the criminal law to condemn and limit the choices of a minority.

This law and its application to Petitioners violate both the guarantee of equal protection and fundamental liberties safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment. Petitioners explain below why the equality claim and the liberty claim are each well rooted in the Constitution. The Court, however, need not rule on both constitutional violations if it chooses to focus on one infirmity rather than the other. Petitioners discuss the fundamental liberty claim under the Due Process Clause first, because even if the Court were not to reach that issue, a full appreciation of the personal interests affected by Section 21.06 also illuminates and informs the equal protection analysis that follows.

Fundamental liberty and privacy interests in adults' private, consensual sexual choices are essential to the ordered liberty our Constitution protects. The State may not, without overriding need, regiment and limit this personal and important part of its citizens' lives. More so than in 1986, when Bowers v. Hardwick was decided, it is clear today that such a fundamental right is supported by our basic constitutional structure, by multiple lines of precedent, and by a decisive historical turn in the vast majority of the States to repudiate this type of government invasion into private life. The well-established fundamental interests in intimate relationships, bodily integrity, and the sanctity of the home all converge in the right asserted here. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). That right belongs to all Americans, including gay men and lesbians, and should be shielded from Section 21.06's unjustified invasion. Much more is needed to outweigh fundamental individual interests than the majority's preferences. Indeed, the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of liberty exists to guard against the very impulse Texas acted on here. Principles of stare decisis do not, in these circumstances, justify adherence to Bowers.

Texas also has violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The Homosexual Conduct Law creates classes of persons, treating the same acts of consensual sexual behavior differently depending on who the participants are. By this law, Texas imposes a discriminatory prohibition on all gay and lesbian couples, requiring them to limit their expressions of affection in ways that heterosexual couples, whether married or unmarried, need not. The law's discriminatory focus sends the message that gay people are second-class citizens and lawbreakers, leading to ripples of discrimination throughout society. Such a discriminatory law cannot satisfy even the minimal requirement that a legislative classification must be rationally related to a legitimate State purpose. See Romer, 517 U.S. 620. The bare negative attitudes of the majority, whether viewed as an expression of morality, discomfort, or blatant bias, cannot take away the equality of a smaller group. See id.; United States Dep't of Agric. v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528, 534 (1973); City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 448 (1985).

ARGUMENT

I. Section 21.06 Violates Constitutional Rights to Liberty and Privacy Possessed by All Americans.

"It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter." Casey, 505 U.S. at 847. It is well settled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the personal liberty of Americans against encroachment by the States, and that this protection of liberty encompasses substantive fundamental rights and interests that are unenumerated. See, e.g., Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65-66 (2000); Casey, 505 U.S. at 846-51; Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dep't of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 278-79 (1990); Carey v. Population Servs. Int'l, 431 U.S. 678, 684-85 (1977); Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 501-03 (1977); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-53 (1973); Griswold, 381 U.S. at 482-85; Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35 (1925); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399-400 (1923). Giving substance to "liberty" is necessary to maintain the individual freedoms that are the essence of American democracy, while also allowing government action that is justified by the collective good. See Casey, 505 U.S. at 849-51.

Among the liberties protected by the Constitution is the right of an adult to make choices about whether and in what manner to engage in private consensual sexual intimacy with another adult, including one of the same sex. This extremely personal sphere implicates three aspects of liberty that have long been recognized as fundamental: the interests in intimate associations, in bodily integrity, and in the privacy of the home. For the State to limit and dictate the intimate choices of American couples in this realm without any substantial justification is repugnant to ordered liberty. Stare decisis does not require continued adherence to the Court's contrary decision in Bowers.

A. American Adults Have Fundamental Liberty and Privacy Interests in Making Their Own Choices About Private, Consensual Sexual Relations.

1. Well-Established Protections for Intimate Relationships, Bodily Integrity, and the Privacy of the Home Converge in This Vital Freedom.

Being forced into a life without sexual intimacy would represent an intolerable and fundamental deprivation for the overwhelming majority of individuals. Equally repugnant is any form of external compulsion to engage in sexual relations. There should be no doubt, then, that the Constitution imposes substantive limits on the power of government to compel, forbid, or regulate the intimate details of private sexual relations between two consenting adults.

All adults have the same fundamental liberty interests in their private consensual sexual choices. This fundamental protection is rooted in three well-recognized aspects of personal liberty—in intimate relationships, in bodily integrity, and in the privacy of the home. These aspects of liberty should not be viewed as "a series of isolated points," but are part of a "rational continuum" that constitutes the full scope of liberty of a free people. Casey, 505 U.S. at 848 (quotation marks omitted); see also Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 572 (1972) ("In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of 'liberty' must be broad indeed"). Sexual intimacy marks an intensely personal and vital part of that continuum.

The Court has recognized that "choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships must be secured against undue intrusion by the State because of the role of such relationships in safeguarding the individual freedom that is central to our constitutional scheme." Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 617-18 (1984). "[T]he constitutional shelter afforded such relationships reflects the realization that individuals draw much of their emotional enrichment from close ties with others. Protecting these relationships from unwarranted state interference therefore safeguards the ability independently to define one's identity that is central to any concept of liberty." Id. at 619; see also Board of Directors of Rotary Int'l v. Rotary Club of Duarte, 481U.S. 537, 545-46 (1987).

The adult couple whose shared life includes sexual intimacy is undoubtedly one of the most important and profound forms of intimate association. The Court has rightly recognized that regulation of the private details of sexual relations between two adults sharing an intimate relationship has "a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship." Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485. Griswold struck down a law that intruded directly into a married couple's private sexual intimacy—and thus their intimate relationship—by criminalizing the use of contraceptives and allowing intercourse only if accompanied by the risk of pregnancy. Id. at 485-86. Since Griswold, the Court has recognized that all adults, regardless of marital status or other facets of their relationship, have the same interest in making their own intimate choices in this area. See Eisenstadt, 405 U.S. at 453 ("If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person") (emphasis in original); Casey, 505 U.S. at 898 ("The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of governmental power"); id. at 852 (reaffirming Eisenstadt and Griswold).

Sexual intimacy is "a sensitive, key relationship of human existence, central to family life, community welfare, and the development of human personality." Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 63 (1973). One's sexual orientation, the choice of one's partner, and whether and how to connect sexually are profound attributes of personhood where compulsion by the State is anathema to liberty. Cf. Casey, 505 U.S. at 851.Thus, the essential associational freedom here is the freedom to structure one's own private sexual intimacy with another adult. Section 21.06 utterly destroys that freedom by forbidding most sexual behavior for all same-sex couples, whether they are in a committed, long-standing relationship, a growing one, or a new one.

State regulation of sexual intimacy also implicates the liberty interest in bodily integrity. "It is settled now . . . that the Constitution places limits on a State's right to interfere with a person's most basic decisions about . . . bodily integrity." Casey, 505 U.S. at 849 (citations omitted); see also id. at 896 ("state regulation . . . is doubly deserving of scrutiny . . . [where] the State has touched not only upon the private sphere of the family but upon the very bodily integrity of the pregnant woman"). Stated generally, "[e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body." Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 777 (Souter, J., concurring) (quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 720; Rochin v. California,342 U.S. 165, 166, 173-74 (1952); Cruzan, 497 U.S. at 278.

Control over one's own body is fundamentally at stake in sexual relations, involving as they do the most intimate physical interactions conceivable. Like the decision whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, or the decision whether to permit or decline medical procedures, the physical, bodily dimensions of how two persons express their sexuality in intimate relations are profoundly personal. Indeed, consent is a critically important dividing line in legal and societal views about sexuality for the very reason that individual control over sexual activity is of fundamental importance to every person's autonomy. Texas invades the liberty interest in bodily integrity by dictating that citizens may not share sexual intimacy unless they perform acts approved by the legislature, and by attempting to coerce them to select a sexual partner of the other sex.

The liberty interest at issue here also involves the deeply entrenched interest in the privacy of the home. "In the home, [the Court's] cases show, all details are intimate details, because the entire area is held safe from prying government eyes." Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 37 (2001) (emphasis in original); Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 98 (1990) (overnight guest receives protection under "everyday expectations of privacy that we all share"). The importance of shielding the home from intrusion goes beyond the Fourth Amendment. In Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474 (1988), for example, the Court relied on the constitutional status of the home in rejecting a First Amendment challenge to an ordinance against picketing targeted at a home. Id. at 484 ("The State's interest in protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society") (quotation marks omitted). And constitutional protection for the home was an important consideration in Griswold itself. See 381 U.S. at 485 (rejecting intrusion into "sacred precincts of marital bedrooms"). "[I]f the physical curtilage of the home is protected, it is surely as a result of the solicitude to protect the privacies of the life within." Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 551 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting); see also Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969).

Even without actual physical entry by the police, Section 21.06 directly invades the privacy of the home by criminalizing the private intimate conduct taking place there. Poe, 367 U.S. at 549, 551-52 (Harlan, J., dissenting). But this case also graphically illustrates how laws criminalizing consensual adult sexual intimacy permit invasion of the privacy of the home in the starkest sense. Although Petitioners do not challenge the lawfulness of the police entry into Lawrence's home in response to a report of an armed gunman, the officers did not withdraw after discovering the report was false. Instead, under license of Section 21.06, they multiplied their intrusion exponentially by scrutinizing the specific intimate acts in which Petitioners were involved, arresting them, hauling them off to jail, and charging them with a crime for which they were later convicted.

Denying the existence of a liberty interest in private consensual adult sexual activity would give constitutional legitimacy to the grossest forms of intrusion into the homes of individuals and couples. To investigate this "criminal" conduct, the police could use every investigative method appropriate when ordinary criminal activity, such as drug use or distribution, occurs in the home: obtaining warrants to search for physical evidence of sexual activity; interrogating each member of the couple about the intimate details of the relationship; and surveillance, wiretaps, confidential informants, and questioning of neighbors. That these routine police methods are so repugnant and unthinkable in the context of adult consensual sexual relations is a strong indication that the conduct at issue differs in a fundamental way from ordinary criminal conduct that happens to occur in the home. Cf. Romer, 517 U.S. at 645 (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("'To obtain evidence [in sodomy cases], police are obliged to resort to behavior which tends to degrade and demean both themselves personally and law enforcement as an institution'") (quoting Kadish, The Crisis of Overcriminalization, 374 Annals of Am. Acad. of Pol. & Soc. Sci. 157, 161 (1967)).

The core liberty interests at stake in this case are a bulwark against an overly controlling and intrusive government. The "fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize," Pierce, 268 U.S. at 535, or "to coerce uniformity," West Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 640 (1943).The right of privacy exists because democracy must impose limits on the extent of control and direction that the state exercises over the day-to-day conduct of individual lives. . . . People do not meaningfully govern themselves if their lives are . . . molded into standard, rigid, normalized roles.Jed Rubenfeld, The Right of Privacy, 102 Harv. L. Rev. 783, 804-05 (1989).

2. There Is No Constitutional Exception to Liberty for Gay and Lesbian Citizens.

Gay and lesbian Americans have the same liberty interests as heterosexuals in private consensual sexual intimacy free from unwarranted intrusion by the State. Gay adults, like their heterosexual counterparts, have vital interests in their intimate relationships, their bodily integrity, and the sanctity of their homes. Today, family lives centered on same-sex relationships are apparent in households and communities throughout the country. Likewise, the special interplay between the privacy of the home and individual decisions about sexual expression applies to lesbians and gay men as it does to others.

A gay or lesbian sexual orientation is a normal and natural manifestation of human sexuality. A difference in sexual orientation means a difference only in that one personal characteristic. Mental health professionals have universally rejected the erroneous belief that homosexuality is a disease. For example, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association concluded that "homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities."For gay adults, as for heterosexual ones, sexual expression is integrally linked to forming and nurturing the close personal bonds that give humans the love, attachment, and intimacy they need to thrive. See, e.g., Lawrence A. Kurdeck, Sexuality in Homosexual and Heterosexual Couples, in Sexuality in Close Relationships 177-91 (K. McKinney & S. Sprecher eds., 1991); Christopher R. Leslie, Creating Criminals: The Injuries Inflicted by "Unenforced" Sodomy Laws, 35 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 103, 119-20 (2000). "[M]ost lesbians and gay men want intimate relationships and are successful in creating them. Homosexual partnerships appear no more vulnerable to problems and dissatisfactions than their heterosexual counterparts." Letitia A. Peplau, Lesbian and Gay Relationships, in Homosexuality 177, 195 (J. Gonsiorek & J. Weinrich eds., 1991). Same-sex relationships often last a lifetime, and provide deep sustenance to each member of the couple. See, e.g., A. Steven Bryant & Demian, Relationship Characteristics of American Gay and Lesbian Couples, 1 J. Gay & Lesbian Soc. Servs. 101 (1994).

That gay Americans have exactly the same vital interests as all others in their bodily integrity and the privacy of their homes is so plain that it appears never to have been disputed in the law. In contrast, the vital liberty interest that gay adults have in their intimate relationships has not always been recognized. Even a few decades ago, intense societal pressure, including many anti-gay government measures, ensured that the vast majority of gay people hid their sexual orientation—even from their own parents—and thus hid the important intimate relationships that gave meaning to their lives. See infra Point II.B.2. Lesbians and gay men, moreover, were falsely seen as sick and dangerous. See infra at 46. As recently as 1986, it was still possible not to perceive the existence and dignity of the families formed by gay adults. See, e.g., Bowers, 478 U.S. at 191, 195.

Today, the reality of these families is undeniable. The 2000 United States Census identified more than 600,000 households of same-sex partners nationally, including almost 43,000 in Texas. These families live in 99.3% of American counties. Many state and local governments and thousands of private employers have adopted domestic partner benefits or more extensive protections for same-sex couples. Virtually every State permits gay men and lesbians to adopt children individually, jointly and/or through "second-parent adoptions" that are analogous to stepparent adoptions. See, e.g., Lofton v. Kearney, 157 F. Supp. 2d 1372, 1374 n.1 (S.D. Fla. 2001) (observing that Florida is currently "the only state" "to statutorily ban adoption by gay or lesbian adults"); American Law Inst., Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations § 2.12 cmt. f, at 312 (2002). These and other legal doctrines have secured parental bonds for many of the estimated millions of children in the United States with gay parents. Ellen C. Perrin, Technical Report: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents, 109 Pediatrics 341, 341 & n.1 (Feb. 2002) (estimating one to nine million children with at least one lesbian or gay parent); see also, e.g., T.B. v. L.R.M., 786 A.2d 913 (Pa. 2001) (allowing claim for partial custody by lesbian second parent under in loco parentis doctrine).

The reality of these families cannot be disregarded just because they do not match the "nuclear" model of a married couple with their biological children. See, e.g., Troxel, 530 U.S. at 63 ("The demographic changes of the past century make it difficult to speak of an average American family. The composition of families varies greatly from household to household"); id. at 85 (Stevens, J., dissenting); id. at 98-101 (Kennedy, J., dissenting); Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110, 124 n.3 (1989) (plurality opinion) ("The family unit accorded traditional respect in our society . . . includes the household of unmarried parents and their children"). For gay men and lesbians, their family life—their intimate associations and the homes in which they nurture those relationships—is every bit as meaningful and important as family life is to heterosexuals.

Thus, the liberty interest at issue here should not be defined in terms of sexual orientation as the "right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy," Bowers, 478 U.S. at 191, or reduced in value on that account. If heterosexual adults have a fundamental interest in consensual sexual intimacy, including the choice to engage in oral or anal sex, then so too must homosexual adults. The Due Process Clause itself does not distinguish among classes of citizens, extending the Constitution's shield to the highly personal associations and choices of some, but not protecting the very same associations and choices for others. These liberties are important to and protected for all Americans.

3. Objective Considerations Support Recognition of Fundamental Interests Here.

To ensure that its decisions in this area are firmly grounded, the Court has sought objective guideposts for the recognition of fundamental liberties. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 857-58 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring, joined by O'Connor, J.) (emphasizing that "objective considerations," including but not limited to "history and precedent," determine substantive due process interests). As just discussed, this Court's precedents and our constitutional structure indicate that the personal liberty protected by the Constitution must include adults' private choices about sexual intimacy. Foremost among other guideposts has been the history of legislation concerning the matter at hand, from prior centuries through the present. See, e.g., Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 710-19.

In reviewing relevant legal traditions, the Court has made clear that protected liberty interests are not limited to those explicitly recognized when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Casey, 505 U.S. at 847, 850 ("such a view would be inconsistent with our law"); Rochin, 342 U.S. at 171-72 ("To believe that . . . judicial exercise of judgment could be avoided by freezing 'due process of law' at some fixed stage of time or thought is to suggest that the most important aspect of constitutional adjudication is a function for inanimate machines and not for judges"). Abundant examples exist of the Court giving meaning to contemporary truths about freedom, where earlier generations had failed to acknowledge and specify an essential aspect of liberty. See, e.g., Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 94-99 (1987); Roe,410 U.S. at 152-53; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967); Griswold, 381 U.S. at 482-85; Pierce, 268 U.S. at 534-35; Meyer, 262 U.S. at 399-400. See generally Casey, 505 U.S. at 847-48.

Similarly, in cases rejecting asserted liberty interests, the Court's decisions have never rested on past legal history alone. Because constitutional "tradition is a living thing," Casey, 505 U.S. at 850 (quotation marks omitted), the Court has always deemed it essential that the relevant legal tradition have continuing vitality today. In Glucksberg, for example, the Court rejected the claimed liberty interest in doctor-assisted suicide based not only on the common law's criminalization of assisted suicide, but also on the fact that "the States' assisted-suicide bans have in recent years been reexamined and, generally"—with a single exception—"reaffirmed." 521 U.S. at 716; see also Michael H., 491 U.S. at 127. Even in Bowers, the Court looked not only to criminal laws concerning sodomy in 1787 and 1868, but also to the fact that half the States continued to outlaw such conduct in 1986. 478 U.S. at 192-94.

Over the last half century, the Nation has firmly broken from its prior legal tradition of criminalizing many adult choices about private sexual intimacy. Even before 1960, however, the relevant legal tradition is more complicated than an initial examination might reveal. Bowers observed that when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, 32 of 37 States had criminal laws against sodomy. 478 U.S. at 192-93. But a critical feature of those 19th century and earlier laws was not discussed by the Bowers majority: Almost without exception, such laws historically have applied to certain specified sex acts without regard to whether same-sex or different-sex couples were involved. See, e.g., Anne B. Goldstein, History, Homosexuality, and Political Values, 97 Yale L.J. 1073, 1082-86 (1988). In addition, actual prosecutions for private intimacy have been exceedingly rare since the Nation's founding. See John D'Emilio & Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 66-67 (1988). And the scope of the specific sexual conduct covered has varied over time. See, e.g., Goldstein, 97 Yale L.J. at 1085-86.

Texas law is a case in point. A Texas statute adopted in 1860 penalized "the abominable and detestable crime against nature" for all persons, Tex. Pen. Code art. 342 (1860); supra note 2, and an amendment in 1943 extended that ban to oral sex for all persons, 1943 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 112, § 1. See supra at 5. Only in 1973 did Texas—like a handful of other States in the same period—replace its general ban with one that singled out the sexual intimacy of same-sex couples for criminal prohibition. 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 399, §§ 1, 3.Thus, our Nation has no longstanding legal tradition of defining permissible or prohibited sexual conduct in terms of sexual orientation. Rather, the tradition exemplified by actual legislation is one of facial neutrality. The few discriminatory laws singling out lesbians and gay men show the divide that existed in the 1970s and 1980s between the majority's view of its own liberties and its lingering anti-gay attitudes.

Most importantly, however, both evenhanded and discriminatory bans on private sexual conduct between consenting adults have been rejected in contemporary times. Since the 1960s, there has been a steady stream of repeals and state judicial invalidations of laws criminalizing consensual sodomy and fornication. "The unmistakable trend . . . nationally . . . is to curb government intrusions at the threshold of one's door and most definitely at the threshold of one's bedroom." Jegley v. Picado, 80 S.W.3d 332, 356 (Ark. 2002) (Brown, J., concurring). By 1986, when Bowers was decided, 26 States had already removed consensual sodomy laws from their criminal codes. See 478 U.S. at 193-94. Today, only 13 States still have such prohibitions. Moreover, of those 13 States, Texas and the three others that have discriminatory rules have eliminated criminal prohibitions in this area for the vast majority of adult couples. Similarly, only six States and the District of Columbia still criminalize fornication.In contrast, when Loving was decided in 1967, 16 States still had criminal laws against interracial marriage. Loving, 388 U.S. at 6 n.5; see also id. at 12 (holding that such laws violate fundamental liberty).

The "consistency of the direction of change" among the States, Atkins v. Virginia, 122 S. Ct. 2242, 2249 (2002), is indicative of a strong national consensus reflecting profound judgments about the limits of government's intrusive powers in a civilized society. The principles and sentiments that have led the States to eliminate these laws are yet another objective indicator of the fundamental interests at stake. For example, when the Georgia Supreme Court struck down, under the state constitution, the very law upheld by this Court in Bowers, it stated: "We cannot think of any other activity that reasonable persons would rank as more private and more deserving of protection from governmental interference than unforced, private, adult sexual activity." Powell v. State, 510 S.E.2d 18, 24 (Ga. 1998); accord, e.g., Gryczan v. State, 942 P.2d 112 , 122 (Mont. 1997) ("all adults regardless of gender, fully and properly expect that their consensual sexual activities will not be subject to the prying eyes of others or to governmental snooping or regulation"); Campbell v. Sundquist, 926 S.W.2d 250, 261 n.9 (Tenn. App. 1996) ("Infringement of such individual rights cannot be tolerated until we tire of democracy and are ready for communism or a despotism"); Commonwealth v. Bonadio, 415 A.2d 47, 50 (Pa. 1980) ("regulat[ing] the private [sexual] conduct of consenting adults . . . exceeds the valid bounds of the police power"); State v. Ciuffini, 395 A.2d 904, 908 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1978) (because consensual sodomy law only "serves as an official sanction of certain conceptions of desirable lifestyles, social mores, or individualized beliefs, it is not an appropriate exercise of the police power"). Legislative repeals reflect the same deepseated values. As Governor Jane Hull said when signing the bill repealing Arizona's sodomy law, "At the end of the day, I returned to one of my most basic beliefs about government—It does not belong in our private lives." Howard Fischer, Hull OKs Repeal of 'Archaic' Sex Laws, Ariz. Daily Star, May 9, 2001, at A1.

A final confirmation underscoring that America has repudiated a role for government as enforcer of permitted forms of intimacy is the virtually non-existent enforcement today of the laws that still are on the books. In the 13 States that still proscribe sodomy, the laws are almost never enforced in criminal proceedings against private consensual intimacy. See Bowers, 478 U.S. at 198 n.2 (Powell, J., concurring) ("prior to the complaint against respondent Hardwick, there had been no reported decision involving prosecution for private homosexual sodomy under this statute for several decades"); Morales, 826 S.W.2d at 203 ("The State concedes that it rarely, if ever, enforces § 21.06"). But as this rare case of prosecution vividly demonstrates, the laws remaining on the books still sometimes strike like lightning, causing the grossest of governmental invasions of privacy through criminal enforcement. The Court should recognize the liberty interests that Petitioners and all Americans have in being free from such invasions.

B. Texas Cannot Justify Section 21.06's Criminal Prohibition of Petitioners' and Other Adults' Private Sexual Intimacy.

Recognition of the fundamental liberty interest at stake here does not end the inquiry, for due regard must also be given to any countervailing interests the State may have and the means used to achieve them. The Court has rejected rigid or mechanical tests in this area. Rather, it has given careful consideration to any weighty governmental interests that stand opposed to a fundamental liberty interest, and has looked closely at the degree and nature of the burden on the liberty interest, before ruling on the ultimate question of constitutionality. See, e.g., Casey, 505 U.S. at 849-51 (opinion of Court); id. at 871-79 (plurality opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ.); Troxel, 530 U.S. at 73 (plurality opinion); id. at 101-02 (Kennedy, J., dissenting); Cruzan, 497 U.S. at 280-81.

Here, however, there is no countervailing State interest remotely comparable to those weighed by this Court in other recent cases involving fundamental liberties, such as the State's interests in protecting the potentiality of human life, Casey, 505 U.S. at 871-79 (opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ.), in protecting the welfare of children, see Troxel, 530 U.S. at 73 (plurality opinion), or in protecting and preserving existing human life, Cruzan, 497 U.S. at 280-81. See also Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 728-35 (reviewing numerous "important and legitimate" interests furthered by ban on assisted suicide).

In stark contrast to those cases, counsel for Texas has conceded that Section 21.06 furthers no compelling state interest. Pet. App. 76a. The sole justification urged throughout this litigation by the State is the majority's desire to espouse prevailing moral principles and values. See, e.g., State's Br. in Supp. of Reh'g En Banc 16. The State claims no distinct harm or public interest other than a pure statement of moral condemnation. This Court, however, has never allowed fundamental freedoms to be circumscribed simply to enforce majority preferences or moral views concerning deeply personal matters. See, e.g., Casey, 505 U.S. at 850-51. Indeed, the discriminatory moral standard employed in the Homosexual Conduct Law is illegitimate under the Equal Protection Clause. See infra Point II.

In arriving at the constitutional balance, the Court must also consider that Texas is using "the full power of the criminal law." Poe, 367 U.S. at 548 (Harlan, J., dissenting). Section 21.06 empowered the police to inspect closely Lawrence and Garner's intimate behavior in Lawrence's home and haul them off to jail. Although prosecutions may be rare and wholly arbitrary, this case shows that the criminal penalties of such laws are on occasion enforced. Criminal sanctions always impose an extreme burden.

Lawrence and Garner were arrested and held in custody for more than a day—a humiliating invasion of personal dignity. "A custodial arrest exacts an obvious toll on an individual's liberty and privacy, even when the period of custody is relatively brief. . . . And once the period of custody is over, the fact of the arrest is a permanent part of the public record." Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 364-65 (2001) (O'Connor, J., dissenting). Petitioners now each have a criminal conviction for private consensual sexuality. This "finding of illegality is a burden by itself. In addition to a declaration of illegality and whatever legal consequences flow from that, the finding also poses the threat of reputational harm that is different and additional to any burden posed by other penalties." BE &K Constr. Co. v. NLRB, 122 S. Ct. 2390, 2398 (2002).

Moreover, "[t]he Texas courts have held that the crime of homosexual conduct . . . is a crime involving moral turpitude." In re Longstaff, 538 F. Supp. 589, 592 (N.D. Tex. 1982) (citation omitted), aff'd, 716 F.2d 1439 (5th Cir. 1983). Petitioners' convictions therefore disqualify or restrict Lawrence and Garner from practicing dozens of professions in Texas, from physician to athletic trainer to bus driver. In four states, Lawrence and Garner are considered sex offenders and would have to register as such with law enforcement. And while Section 21.06 does not authorize imprisonment as a penalty, prison terms can be imposed in the 12 other States with sodomy prohibitions, in some cases up to ten years.

Even where there is no direct enforcement, Section 21.06 intrudes into the privacy of innumerable homes by regulating the actual physical details of how consenting adults must conduct their most intimate relationships. As discussed above, see supra Point I.A., such an invasion starkly offends the fundamental freedom of adulthood that is at stake. The Homosexual Conduct Law's absolute criminal ban is a harsh burden for all covered by the law.

The balance in this case thus heavily favors individual liberty. Texas's justification—amounting to a mere declaration that the State disapproves of same-sex couples engaging in the conduct at issue, in the absence of any asserted public need or harm—cannot be sufficient. See Casey, 505 U.S. at 850-53; Roe, 410 U.S. at 162; Poe, 367 U.S. at 548 (Harlan, J., dissenting). If it were, the power of the government to restrict liberty interests would be unlimited. The very meaning of fundamental liberty interests is that this kind of decision—affecting the most personal and central aspects of one's life—should be made by the individual, not the State.

While Texas may advocate a majority view about sexual morality, it may not excessively burden the liberty interests of those citizens who profoundly disagree. See, e.g., Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 475-76 (1977) ("There is a basic difference between direct state interference with a protected activity and state encouragement of an alternative activity . . . . Constitutional concerns are greatest when the State attempts to impose its will by force of law"). Texas may not impose its particular view through the intrusive force of a criminal law regulating the very forms of physical intimacy that consenting adults may choose in the privacy of their own homes. By claiming the power to impose its own moral code where constitutional guarantees of personal liberty are at stake, Texas is reversing the proper relationship between the government and a free people.

The Court long ago made clear that the Constitution "excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children" because "[t]he child is not the mere creature of the state." Pierce, 268 U.S. at 535; accord Troxel, 530 U.S. at 68 (plurality opinion). Yet, what Texas claims here is the power to standardize its adult citizens and render them mere creatures of the State by compelling conformity in the most private and intimate personal matters. By vote of the majority, one particular view of how to conduct one's most private relationships is imposed on all. But "fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election." Barnette, 319 U.S. at 638. The precepts advocated by Texas, aimed at "submerg[ing] the individual," are "wholly different from those upon which our institutions rest." Meyer, 262 U.S. at 402. Section 21.06 unjustifiably infringes the personal liberty and privacy guaranteed by the Constitution and should be struck down.

C. Bowers Should Not Block Recognition and Enforcement of These Fundamental Interests.

Vindication of Petitioners' constitutionally protected liberty interests should not be blocked by continued adherence to Bowers. In light of the fundamental interests at stake and the consistent and profound legal, political, and social developments since Bowers, principles of stare decisis do not bar the Court's reconsideration of that decision.

Stare decisis is a "principle of policy," not an "inexorable command." Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 63 (1996) (quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 235-36 (1997) (same). That is "particularly true in constitutional cases, because in such cases correction through legislative action is practically impossible." Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 63 (quotation marks omitted). For these reasons, the Court has not hesitated to overrule earlier constitutional decisions that have been recognized as erroneous. See, e.g., Payne v .Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 828 & n.1 (1991) (surveying cases); Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Stare Decisis and Judicial Restraint, 1991 J. S. Ct. Hist. 13 (same).

Where, as here, a prior decision has erroneously denied a fundamental constitutional right of citizens over and against the State and no countervailing rights of other individuals are at stake, there is a compelling need to correct the error. See, e.g., Barnette, 319 U.S. at 630-42 (overruling Minersville Sch. Dist. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940)); see also, e.g., Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 494-95 (1954) (overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)). That is especially true here, because laws of the kind upheld by Bowers—whether facially evenhanded or discriminatory—are used to legitimize widespread discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans. See infra Point II.B.1. Indeed, the holding of Bowers itself has been cited as justifying state-sponsored discrimination. See, e.g., Padula v. Webster, 822 F.2d 97, 103 (D.C. Cir. 1987) ("If the Court [in Bowers] was unwilling to object to state laws that criminalize the behavior that defines the class, it is hardly open . . . to conclude that state sponsored discrimination against the class is invidious"); Romer, 517 U.S. at 641 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (same).

In this respect Bowers is fundamentally different from decisions like Roe or Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), which recognized individual rights that then became incorporated into the very fabric of our society. See Casey, 505 U.S. at 854; Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 443 (2000). Indeed, there are no considerations like those identified in Casey or other stare decisis cases that might favor continued adherence to Bowers.

Unlike the right recognized in Roe and its progeny, there is no pattern of individuals who "have relied reasonably on the [Bowers] rule's continued application" to their advantage, Casey, 505 U.S. at 855; see also, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 233 (1995). Individuals have only been harmed by the Bowers decision. Nor has Bowers become "part of our national culture," Dickerson, 530 U.S. at 443. Just the opposite is true. Developments in the law and in the facts—or in society's perception of the facts, see Casey, 505 U.S. at 863—have steadily eroded any support for Bowers. Since Bowers, the Nation has continued to reject the extreme intrusion into the realm of personal privacy approved in that case, so that now three-fourths of the States have repealed or invalidated such laws—including the very law upheld by Bowers. See supra Point I.A.3.

Also since Bowers, the Nation has steadily moved toward rejecting second-class-citizen status for gay and lesbian Americans. In Romer, this Court held that venerable equal protection principles protect gay and lesbian Americans against invidious discrimination. Thirteen States and the District of Columbia, plus countless municipalities—including at least four in Texas—have now added sexual orientation to laws barring discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, and other areas. More than half the States now have enhanced penalties for hate crimes motivated by the victim's sexual orientation. And the reality of gay and lesbian couples and families with children has been increasingly recognized by the law and by society at large. See supra at 17-19. This is thus a case in which the Court must respond to basic facts and constitutional principles that the country has "come to understand already, but which the Court of an earlier day . . . had not been able to perceive." Casey, 505 U.S. at 863; see also, e.g., Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 266 (1986) (stare decisis must give way when necessary "to bring [the Court's] opinions into agreement with experience and with facts newly ascertained") (quotation marks omitted).

Bowers is an isolated decision that, like the cases overturned in Payne, was "decided by the narrowest of margins, over spirited dissents challenging [its] basic underpinnings." Payne, 501 U.S. at 828-29. Far from being "an essential feature of our legal tradition," Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314, 330 (1999), Bowers stands today as "a doctrinal anachronism discounted by society," Casey, 505 U.S. at 855. Many of the bedrock principles of contemporary constitutional law were announced in cases overruling contrary precedent—whether after only a few intervening years, or following decades of legal, political, and social development. See, e.g., Barnette, 319 U.S. at 630; Brown, 347 U.S. at 494-95; Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (1925); Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 4-6 (1964). As in those cases, the Court "cannot turn the clock back." Brown, 347 U.S. at 492-93. It accordingly should overturn Bowers and protect the fundamental liberty interests of Petitioners.

II. Section 21.06 Discriminates Without Any Legitimate and Rational Basis, Contrary to the Guarantee of Equal Protection.

Texas's Homosexual Conduct Law violates the Fourteenth Amendment for the additional reason that it "singl[es] out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status," Romer, 517 U.S. at 633, in violation of the most basic requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. The statute directly conflicts with the Constitution's "commitment to the law's neutrality." Id. at 623. It fails equal protection scrutiny even under the deferential "rational basis" standard. And this discriminatory classification is "embodied in a criminal statute . . . where the power of the State weighs most heavily," a context in which the Court "must be especially sensitive to the policies of the Equal Protection Clause." McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 192 (1964).

By its terms, Section 21.06 treats the same consensual sexual behavior differently depending on who the participants are. The behaviors labeled "deviate sexual intercourse" by Texas are widely practiced by heterosexual as well as gay adults. But the statute makes this common conduct illegal only for same-sex couples and not for different-sex ones. Tex. Pen. Code § 21.06. And the State offers only a tautological, illegitimate, and irrational purported justification for such discrimination.

The group targeted and harmed by the Homosexual Conduct Law is, of course, gay people. Gay people have a same-sex sexual orientation and heterosexuals have a different-sex one. See, e.g., John C. Gonsiorek & James D. Weinrich, The Definition and Scope of Sexual Orientation, in Homosexuality: Research Implications for Public Policy 1 (J. Gonsiorek & J. Weinrich eds., 1991) ("sexual orientation is erotic and/or affectional disposition to the same and/or opposite sex"); cf. Romer, 517 U.S. at 624, 626-31 (in civil rights laws, "sexual orientation" is defined by an individual's "choice of sexual partners" or "heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality"). The Homosexual Conduct Law overtly uses that defining characteristic to set up its disparate treatment. Section 21.06 "prohibit[s] lesbians and gay men from engaging in the same conduct in which heterosexuals may legally engage." Morales, 826 S.W.2d at 204; see also Wasson, 842 S.W.2d at 502 (where same-sex but not different-sex sodomy is criminalized, "[s]exual preference, and not the act committed, determines criminality, and is being punished").

A straightforward application of the rational basis test shows that this law and Texas's attempted justification for it cannot satisfy the requirement that every classification must at least "bear a rational relationship to an independent and legitimate legislative end." Romer, 517 U.S. at 633. When broader realities and history are considered, as this Court appropriately does in any equal protection case, the constitutional violation is only magnified. The Homosexual Conduct Law and its badge of criminality function to make gay people unequal in myriad spheres of everyday life and continue an ignominious history of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Ultimately, the equal protection and liberty concerns in this case reinforce one another, and further underscore that this unequal law and its broad harms are intolerable in this country.

A. Section 21.06's Classification Is Not Rationally Related to Any Legitimate Purpose and Serves Only the Illegitimate Purpose of Disadvantaging One Group.

"[C]onventional and venerable" principles require that legislative discrimination must, at a minimum, "bear a rational relationship to an independent and legitimate legislative end." Romer, 517 U.S. at 633, 635; see also, e.g., Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 446; Western & S. Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 451 U.S. 648, 668 (1981). This test is deferential, but meaningful.[E]ven in the ordinary equal protection case . . . , [the Court] insist[s] on knowing the relation between the classification adopted and the object to be attained. The search for the link between classification and objective gives substance to the Equal Protection Clause; it provides guidance and discipline for the legislature, which is entitled to know what sort of laws it can pass; and it marks the outer limits of [the judiciary's] own authority.Romer, 517 U.S. at 632.

Under the Equal Protection Clause, the classification—the different treatment of different people—is what must be justified. See Board of Trustees of the Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 366-67 (2001) (rational basis review searches for "distinguishing characteristics" between the two groups that are "relevant to interests the State has the authority to implement") (quotation marks omitted); Rinaldi v. Yeager, 384 U.S. 305, 308-09 (1966) (equal protection "imposes a requirement of some rationality in the nature of the class singled out"); McLaughlin, 379 U.S. at 191 ("courts must reach and determine the question whether the classifications drawn in a statute are reasonable in light of its purpose—. . . whether there is an arbitrary or invidious discrimination between those classes covered . . . and those excluded"). The classification must be rationally connected to an independent and permissible government objective to "ensure that classifications are not drawn for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law." Romer, 517 U.S. at 633.

Section 21.06 fails that essential test. As the Supreme Court of Kentucky observed in striking down that State's discriminatory consensual sodomy law on state equal protection grounds:In the final analysis we can attribute no legislative purpose to this statute except to single out homosexuals for different treatment for indulging their sexual preference by engaging in the same activity heterosexuals are now at liberty to perform . . . . The question is whether a society that no longer criminalizes adultery, fornication, or deviate sexual intercourse between heterosexuals, has a rational basis to single out homosexual acts for different treatment.Wasson, 842 S.W.2d at 501. That court found no "rational basis for different treatment," and emphasized that "[w]e need not sympathize, agree with, or even understand the sexual preference of homosexuals in order to recognize their right to equal treatment before the bar of criminal justice." Id.; accord Jegley, 80 S.W.3d at 353 ("[w]e echo Kentucky in concluding that 'we can attribute no legislative purpose to this statute except to single out homosexuals'"). That conclusion applies with equal force to the identical classification employed by Texas's law.

When Texas enacted Section 21.06 in the early 1970s, there was no "practical necessity" to draw a classification among its residents with regard to the subject matter of consensual, adult oral and anal sex. Cf. Romer, 517 U.S. at 631. For decades, the State had included an evenhanded prohibition on those acts within its criminal code. When the legislature determined that its old law was unduly intrusive, it had the obvious choice of repealing it for all its citizens—as three-fourths of the States have done. See supra at 23 & note 17. Instead, it decided to single out same-sex couples for intrusive regulation and condemnation, and to free all heterosexual couples to make their own choices about particular forms of intimacy.

Throughout this litigation, the only justification that Texas has offered for this discriminatory classification is the moral judgment of the majority of its electorate. The State asserts that its "electorate evidently continues to believe" that the discriminatory line drawn by the Homosexual Conduct Law is desirable because it expresses the majority's moral views. Pet. Opp. 18.

The Homosexual Conduct Law's classification fails rational basis analysis, for several reasons. First, the State's position amounts to no "independent . . . legislative end" at all. Cf. Romer, 517 U.S. at 633. This "justification" merely restates that Texas believes in and wants to have this criminal law. The Equal Protection Clause requires that the State's classification serve a distinct legislative end—an objective or purpose—independent of the classification itself. There must be a "link between classification and objective," id. at 632, or "some relation between the classification and the purpose it serve[s]," id. at 633. The test would be meaningless—a mere rubberstamp for discrimination—unless the purpose is independent of the classification. But the "justification" offered by Texas is circular and not an independent objective served. In the words of the dissenters below, "[t]he contention that the same conduct is moral for some but not for others merely repeats, rather than legitimizes, the Legislature's unconstitutional edict." Pet. App. 44a.

The State's approach gives carte blanche to presumed majority sentiment, and leaves those targeted by a discriminatory law without recourse. If majority moral or value judgments were enough to answer an equal protection challenge, the amendment struck down in Romer would have survived, because the votes of a majority of Coloradans clearly signaled that including gay people within civil rights protections was antithetical to their values. Instead, this Court recognized that Amendment 2—like Section 21.06 here—was a "classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit." 517 U.S. at 635. Government "may not avoid the strictures of that Clause by deferring to the wishes or objections . . . of the body politic." Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448.

Second, even if Texas's objective could somehow be characterized as independent of the classification, mere negative views about the disfavored group—"moral" or otherwise—are not a legitimate basis for legal discrimination. Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448 ("mere negative attitudes . . . unsubstantiated by factors which are properly cognizable [by government] are not permissible bases" for discriminatory legal rules). This Court has many times repeated the core principle of rejecting bias, however characterized, in law: Legal distinctions may not give effect to the majority's desire to condemn an unpopular group, see Moreno, 413 U.S. at 534, the negative reactions of neighbors, see Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448, the fears of people who are different, see id., a reaction of discomfort toward a minority, see O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 575 (1975); Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448-49, private prejudice, Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433 (1984), or any other manifestation of unfounded animosity toward one group, Romer, 517 U.S. at 633-35. History unquestionably teaches that the moral views of a given time, just like fears, dislikes, and blatant prejudices, often reflect prevailing negative attitudes about different groups of people in society. Cf. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 376 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring) ("Men feared witches and burnt women"). Indeed, negative attitudes toward a group can always be recast in terms of a discriminatory moral code. Using a moral lens to describe negative attitudes about a group that are not tied to any distinct, objective and permissible factors cannot cleanse those bare negative attitudes of their illegitimacy in government decisionmaking.

Texas's approach of dictating that same-sex couples are "more 'immoral and unacceptable,'" Pet. Opp. 18, than heterosexual couples under the very same circumstances—if they choose any of the behaviors defined as "deviate sexual intercourse"—must be rejected as impermissible. Neutral, evenhanded laws that truly restrict all persons in the same way could, if there were no fundamental interests at stake, be justified by a moral position. Here, however, Texas impermissibly attempts to impose a discriminatory moral code. The State's law and its proffered justification embody a bald preference for those with the most common sexual orientation and dislike of a smaller group who are different. Texas simply wants to judge those with a same-sex sexual orientation more harshly for the same behavior.

The Constitution and this Court's precedents forbid that. In Palmore, a mother lost custody of her child because her interracial "'life-style'" was "'unacceptable . . . to society.'" 466 U.S. at 431 (quoting investigator's report). But this Court emphatically held that such negative views have no place in the law. Id. at 433 ("Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect"). Likewise, unequal treatment may not be based on archaic and unfounded negative attitudes toward a group, whether grounded in morality, religious conviction, or "nature." In Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982), for example, the Court stressed the need to set aside archaic ideas about gender, such as that women are "innately inferior" or that unique "'moral and social problems'" would arise if women tended bar or otherwise enjoyed equal opportunities. Id. at 725 & n.10.

Similarly, negative attitudes toward those with a particular personal characteristic—even where advanced with the toneddown patina of morality—are also not a legitimate justification for discrimination under rational basis scrutiny. In Romer, the Court refused to endorse the dissent's position that Amendment 2's anti-gay classification could be sustained as an attempt "to preserve traditional sexual mores," Romer, 517 U.S. at 636 (Scalia, J., dissenting). In Moreno, faced with a regulation that targeted the morally disfavored group of "hippies," the Court emphasized that "if the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest." Moreno, 413 U.S. at 534. Instead, different treatment must be supported by "reference to [some independent] considerations in the public interest." Id. (alteration in original). Whether termed a moral judgment, fear, discomfort, or bias, "mere negative attitudes" about one subset of the diverse American population cannot justify distinctions in legal treatment. See Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448.

Third, there is no other legitimate justification that can save this law. The distinction drawn by the Homosexual Conduct Law does not rationally further any permissible goal of the State. There are no valid concerns of the government here that correlate with sexual orientation, which is a deeply rooted personal characteristic that we all have. Variation among heterosexuals, homosexuals, and bisexuals has no "relevan[cy] to interests the State has the authority to implement," Garrett, 531 U.S. at 366, or to "factors which are properly cognizable," Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 448, in writing the criminal law. Thus, Section 21.06's linedrawing does not turn on or respond to any differences in maturity or age, in intent, or in the specifics of the actors' relationship, other than its same-sex or different-sex nature. It does not incorporate the use of force, a public location, or a commercial context in its elements, to address those types of important concerns. Indeed, Texas has other laws that criminalize sexual conduct that is non-consensual, or public, or commercial, or with a minor. See supra at 6. Likewise, the law's discriminatory regulation of "deviate sexual intercourse" is unrelated to any interest in reproduction, for oral and anal sex are obviously not methods of reproduction for any couple.

Where government itself offers a reason that is illegitimate, as Texas has done here, or other factors indicate that the law rests on negative attitudes, the Court has carefully assessed any additional, purportedly rational and legitimate basis for challenged differential treatment. See Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 449 (careful assessment, and ultimate rejection, of other proffered reasons, where negative attitudes were clearly one basis for legal discrimination); Moreno, 413 U.S. at 535-38 (same). In such rational basis cases, the Court has not tried to supply new, "conceivable" reasons to support the classification. See also Romer, 517 U.S. at 635. It is, after all, only "absent some reason to infer antipathy" that the "Constitution presumes that . . . even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted." Vance v. Bradley 440 U.S. 93, 97 (1979) (emphasis added). Here, Texas offers nothing more than the majority's negative moral judgment to support its discrimination, and that should end the matter with a ruling of unconstitutionality.

This 1970s classification is "divorced from any factual context from which [the Court] could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests." Romer, 517 U.S. at 635. It is solely an effort to mark a difference in status, to send a message in the criminal law that one group is condemned by the majority. This impermissible and irrational double standard must be removed from Texas's criminal code.

B. The Broader Realities Reinforce This Law's Affront to Core Principles of Equal Protection.

Additional considerations confirm the violation of equal protection here. First, the Homosexual Conduct Law does not just discriminate against gay and lesbian Texans in their private intimate relations, but brands gay persons as second-class citizens and legitimizes discrimination against them in all aspects of life. Second, the discrimination worked by this law reflects and reinforces a century-long history of discrimination against gay Americans. The real-world context and history of discrimination further expose the law's illegitimacy. See Romer, 517 U.S. at 623-31 (considering in detail the functioning and historical background of challenged enactment); Moreno, 413 U.S. at 537 (considering "practical effect" of classification); Eisenstadt, 405 U.S. at 447-52 (considering social and legal backdrop in finding equal protection violation under rational basis standard). Where a law "circumscribe[s] a class of persons characterized by some unpopular trait or affiliation," there is a "special likelihood of bias on the part of the ruling majority." N.Y. Trans. Auth. v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 593 (1979).

1. The Homosexual Conduct Law Brands Gay Persons As Second-Class Citizens and Licenses Wide-Ranging Discrimination Against Them.

On the surface, the Homosexual Conduct Law may appear to discriminate against gay men and lesbians in only one sphere of life—albeit a vitally important one, see supra Point I—by criminalizing the sexual intimacy of same-sex adult couples but not the very same conduct engaged in by different-sex couples. In reality, the scope of the discrimination is much broader. Today, sodomy laws—even facially evenhanded sodomy laws—are widely understood to brand gay citizens as criminals by virtue of their sexual orientation, and are thus used to legitimate across-the-board discrimination. Texas's enactment of a facially discriminatory law formalizes that pejorative classification of lesbians and gay men as second-class citizens.

Historically, the vast majority of consensual sodomy laws have not differentiated between same-sex and different-sex couples, and nine of the 13 sodomy laws still on the books today retain that traditional characteristic of being facially evenhanded. See supra at 6 & note 5, 21-22. In recent eventimes, however, facially non-discriminatory laws have been understood as targeting gay men and lesbians rather than heterosexual couples who engage in identical forms of private sexual intimacy covered by the laws. This contemporary understanding of these laws was reflected in—and reinforced by—the Court's reasoning in Bowers, which read Georgia's facially neutral law as reflecting "the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable." 478 U.S. at 196 (emphasis added). See generally Nan D. Hunter, Life After Hardwick, 27 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 531, 542 (1992).

Thus, in recent decades, the existence of facially nondiscriminatory sodomy laws—indeed, the mere power of state legislatures to pass such laws, whether or not that power is exercised—has been used to justify myriad forms of discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans as presumptive criminals. For example, sodomy laws are often invoked to deny or restrict gay parents' custody of or visitation with their own children, to deny public employment to gay people, and to block protection of gay citizens under hate-crime legislation. Indeed, the dissent in Romer argued that the Court's holding in Bowers alone was sufficient justification for the sweeping discrimination against gay citizens worked by Colorado Amendment 2, Romer, 517 U.S. at 640-43 (Scalia, J., dissenting)—even though Colorado's former sodomy law had applied to all and had been repealed years before, see 1971 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 121.

Texas has gone further, abandoning any pretense of nondiscriminatory legislation in this area by enacting a law that facially discriminates against gay and lesbian couples. By introducing that express classification into the criminal law, Texas has placed its imprimatur on discrimination based on sexual orientation. That has had far-reaching implications for gay citizens in virtually every area of their lives. As the State stipulated in an earlier challenge to Section 21.06, the law "brands lesbians and gay men as criminals and thereby legally sanctions discrimination against them in a variety of ways unrelated to the criminal law," including "in the context of employment, family issues, and housing." Morales, 826 S.W.2d at 202-03; see also Jegley, 80 S.W.3d at 343 (under same-sex-only sodomy laws, gay people "suffer the brand of criminal impressed upon them by a[n] . . . unconstitutional law").

The Homosexual Conduct Law and similar statutes in other States have been routinely invoked to limit the custody or visitation that fit, gay parents would otherwise have with their own children. Likewise, this law is cited as a basis for preventing lesbians and gay men from serving as foster parents, simply because of their presumed "criminal status" and wholly apart from any inquiry into the best interests of children awaiting a home. See, e.g., Polly Hughes, Bill Would Ban Gay Texans From Adopting Children, Hous. Chron., Dec. 11, 1998, at A38 (reporting on adoption and foster-care policies). Section 21.06 and other discriminatory consensual sodomy offenses have been used to interfere with equal employment opportunities for lesbians and gay men. England, 846 S.W.2d at 958; Childers v. Dallas Police Dep't, 513 F. Supp. 134, 144, 147-48 (N.D. Tex. 1981) (upholding denial of employment to gay man), aff'd, 669 F.2d 732 (5th Cir. 1982); Baker, 553 F. Supp. at 1130, 1147. These laws are also used to block the adoption of civil rights ordinances that would prohibit sexual orientation discrimination in employment and other core aspects of civil society. The Homosexual Conduct Law has even been cited in arguments for imposing the death penalty on a gay defendant, Burdine v. Johnson, 66 F. Supp. 2d 854, 857 (S.D. Tex. 1999), aff'd, 262 F.3d 336 (5th Cir. 2001) (en banc), cert. denied, 122 S. Ct. 2347 (2002). In these many ways and others, the Homosexual Conduct Law is functioning as a legal reference point that endorses gay inequality.

Thus, even in the absence of actual arrest and prosecution, the Homosexual Conduct Law labels gay men and lesbians as criminals and legitimates discrimination against them on that basis. Classification of gay Texans as second-class citizens is indeed the primary function of this law in society, as evidenced by the rarity of direct criminal enforcement. Texas makes no pretense of vigorously enforcing this law or of actually preventing any private, consensual adult sexual behavior. Morales, 826 S.W.2d at 203 ("The State concedes that it rarely, if ever, enforces § 21.06"). Only rare couples who are caught through some extremely unlucky series of events, like Lawrence and Garner in this case, ever directly suffer criminal prosecution and punishment for their discreet intimacy. Model Penal Code § 213.2 cmt. 2 ("To the extent . . . that laws against deviate sexual behavior are enforced against private conduct between consenting adults, the result is episodic and capricious selection of an infinitesimal fraction of offenders for severe punishment"). The branding function of the Homosexual Conduct Law and the civil harms that follow from it forcefully underscore that the law violates equal protection. It "has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group," Romer, 517 U.S. at 632, without rational and legitimate justification.

2. The Homosexual Conduct Law Reflects and Helps Fuel a Continuing History of Discrimination Against Gay Americans.

The Homosexual Conduct Law is only one manifestation of a history of irrational anti-gay discrimination. Although our Nation has no legal tradition making the criminality of private sexuality turn on whether a couple is homosexual or heterosexual, see supra at 21-22, the laws of this Nation have reflected and played a role in virulent anti-gay discrimination over the last century. In enforcing the Equal Protection Clause today, this history informs the Court's assessment of whether a legal classification that discriminates against those with a same-sex sexual orientation rests on irrational bias. See Vance, 440 U.S. at 97 (Court is attuned to "some reason to infer antipathy"); see also, e.g., Romer, 517 U.S. at 624-31.

Anti-gay discrimination was long justified by the false view that gay individuals were "sick." Until 1973, the year Section 21.06 was passed, homosexuality was incorrectly classified as a mental disease. See supra note 10; see also Boutilier v. INS, 387 U.S. 118 (1967) (holding that "psychopathic personality" exclusion in immigration law applied to homosexual persons). Deeming them to be "sex deviants," States involuntarily committed gay men and lesbians to mental institutions under extremely inhumane conditions. See, e.g., James A. Garland, The Low Road to Violence: Governmental Discrimination as a Catalyst for Pandemic Hate Crime, 10 L. & Sexuality 1, 75-76 (2001). "Treatments" to "cure" homosexuality were often sadistically cruel. See, e.g., Jonathan N. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac 156 (1983) (describing "treatment" involving "repeated searing with a hot iron or chemical of [the] 'pervert' patient's loins"); Jonathan N. Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. 129-208 (rev. ed. 1992). Even today, discredited "therapies" to "change" the very sexual orientation of gay adults continue this destructive pathologizing of gay citizens.

The Homosexual Conduct Law is a remnant of a historical pattern of repressive law enforcement measures that have reinforced an outcast status for gay citizens. In the past, state laws authorized the arrest of individuals simply for "appearing" to be gay or lesbian, and the closure of businesses simply for serving gay patrons. See, e.g., One Eleven Wines & Liqours, Inc. v. Division of Alcohol Beverage Control, 235 A.2d 12, 14 (N.J. 1967) (reviewing and rejecting agency policy of suspending businesses' licenses simply for "permitting the congregation of apparent homosexuals"). McCarthy-era and later witch hunts led to the firing from federal and federal-contractor employment of thousands of persons suspected of being homosexuals. Katz, Gay American History, at 91-109; Norton v. Macy, 417 F.2d 1161, 1162 (D.C. Cir. 1969).

Official repression has often been directed at preventing gay Americans from organizing politically to advocate for and protect their rights. The earliest gay political organization in America, formed in Chicago in the mid-1920s, was silenced by police raids, arrests, and firings from employment. See, e.g, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Channeling: Identity-Based Social Movements and Public Law, 150 U. Pa. L. Rev. 419, 438 & n.77 (2001). Similar groups that emerged after World War II also suffered severe harassment. See, e.g., id. at 443-48. Educational publications about homosexuality were censored as "obscene." See, e.g., One, Inc. v. Olesen, 241 F.2d 772 (9th Cir. 1957), rev'd, 355 U.S. 371 (1958) (per curiam).

Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, gay Americans have made substantial strides toward securing equal rights. See supra at 17-19, 30-31. But there is still substantial inequality and backlash. In passing a statute last year that protects against sexual-orientation discrimination, the New York state legislature found that anti-gay prejudice "has severely limited or actually prevented access to employment, housing and other basic necessities of life, leading to deprivation and suffering." N.Y. Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, 2002 N.Y. Laws ch. 2. Cruel anti-gay harassment in schools remains common. See, e.g., Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d 446 (7th Cir. 1996). And violence motivated by irrational hatred of gay people can result in crimes of unimaginable brutality, as occurred with the murder of college student Matthew Shepard. See, e.g., A Vicious Attack on Gay Student, Beaten, Burned and Left for Dead, N.Y. Newsday, Oct. 10, 1998, at A4. Such killings, together with lesser forms of violence, intimidation, and discrimination, remain extremely effective in deterring gay Americans from revealing their sexual orientation, and thus from working openly to end anti-gay discrimination. By marking gay men and lesbians as criminals, discriminatory sodomy laws reinforce and intensify the irrational prejudice that leads to such violence. See Leslie, Creating Criminals, 35 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. at 124.

The Constitution "neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Romer, 517 U.S. at 623 (quotation marks omitted). In distinguishing laws based on hostility from ordinary legislative linedrawing, the Court should not ignore the persistent and destructive American history of anti-gay discrimination. The Homosexual Conduct Law is the State's own endorsement of discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

C. Equal Protection Concerns Are Particularly Strong Here Because of the Personal Burdens Imposed by This Criminal Law.

The Constitution's equal protection and due process protections are articulated together. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Those dual safeguards reinforce one another, including in cases where liberty concerns may not rise to the level of a fundamental right or may be indirectly implicated. In this case, regardless of the Court's ultimate ruling on Point I, the personal burdens and restrictions on freedom imposed by Section 21.06 strengthen the need to reject its discriminatory classification.

On numerous occasions, the Court has held that where an extremely important personal interest is at stake, the State may not grant some citizens the ability to vindicate that interest but altogether deny other citizens that ability, even if the State could employ an evenhanded denial to all citizens. For example, there is no due process right to appellate review of decrees severing the parent-child bond. M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519 U.S. 102, 120 (1996). Where, however, the State grants review of such decrees to its citizens generally, it may not deny review to the few who cannot pay costs. Id. at 107; see also, e.g., Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 374 (1971) (although there is no right to obtain divorce, where State makes divorce available to most couples, it may not bar indigent persons from divorce due to inability to pay). That is so, even though wealth classifications are not inherently suspect, see San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 28 (1973), and the imposition of costs on litigants is otherwise rationally related to a legitimate state interest, M.L.B., 519 U.S. at 123. Because the imposition of costs in M.L.B. at least indirectly implicated "state controls or intrusions on family relationships," id. at 116, the Court closely examined the unique burden the State had placed on the poor and rejected it as offensive to the combined guarantees of equal protection and due process. See id. at 120 The constitutional challenge in this case is also of an especially serious order, because it "endeavor[s] to defend against the States's destruction of family bonds, and to resist the brand associated with" criminality that is now imposed only on the deeply personal and intimate sexual relations of gay adults. Cf. id. at 125. As in M.L.B., the outcome here should "reflect both equal protection and due process concerns." Id. at 120.

Similarly, there is no fundamental right to an education, and undocumented aliens are not a suspect class, but in light of the importance of the interest in education in our society, a law barring undocumented aliens from receiving a state-funded education will be rigorously scrutinized. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216-24 (1982). The nature of the deprivation, though not a fundamental right, informs and strengthens the equal protection claim. As the Court reasoned in Plyler, exclusion of one isolated group from such an important sphere "poses an affront to one of the goals of the Equal Protection Clause: the abolition of governmental barriers presenting unreasonable obstacles to advancement on the basis of individual merit." Id. at 221-22. It imposes a "stigma" that "will mark them for the rest of their lives." Id. at 223. Here, too, the Court must not ignore the stigma and the obstacle to equal advancement in society that accompanies the discriminatory law that Texas seeks to defend in assessing its validity under the Equal Protection Clause. This classification likewise "involve[s] the State in the creation of permanent class distinctions" and relegates gay men and lesbians to "second-class social status." Cf. id. at 234 (Blackmun, J., concurring).

The Equal Protection Clause is a critical guardian of liberty as well as equality. It defends against unreasonable exactions by the State because it "requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me." Cruzan, 497 U.S. at 300 (Scalia, J., concurring); accord Railway Express Agency v. New York, 336 U.S. 106, 112-13 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring). The Texas Homosexual Conduct Law makes a mockery of that principle. Just as the majority may not decide that the availability of divorce or education is critical for the majority itself but then deny those benefits to a few, so Texas may not determine that freedom from state intrusion into the private sexual intimacy of two consenting adults is an important aspect of liberty for most of its citizens, but then deny that liberty to a minority—particularly a minority historically subject to discrimination. Consensual sexual decisions are too clearly matters for individual decisionmaking, not for imposition by the State. The discriminatory criminal law at issue here seriously diminishes the personal relationships and legal standing of a distinct class, and under the Fourteenth Amendment cannot stand.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Texas Court of Appeals upholding Section 21.06 and affirming Petitioners' criminal convictions thereunder should be reversed.

Respectfully submitted,

• Paul M. Smith
• William M. Hohengarten
• Daniel Mach
• Sharon M. McGowan
• JENNER & BLOCK, LLC
• 601 13th Street, N.W.
• Washington, DC 20005
• (202) 639-6000

• Mitchell Katine
• WILLIAMS, BIRNBERG & ANDERSEN, L. L.P.
• 6671 Southwest Freeway, Suite 303
• Houston, Texas 77074
• (713) 981-9595

• Ruth E. Harlow
• Counsel of Record
• Patricia M. Logue
• Susan L. Sommer
• LAMBDA LEGAL DEFENCSE AND EDUCATION FUND, INC.
• 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
• New Yor, NY 10005
• (212)809-8585

• Counsel for Petitioners
• Dated: January 16, 2003

Back to the Table of Contents

MILESTONES IN THE LAW

In The Supreme Court of the United States

JOHN GEDDES LAWRENCE AND TYRON GARNER, Petitioners,

v.

STATE OF TEXAS, Respondent.

On Writ Of Certiorari To The Texas Court Of Appeals For The Fourteenth District

RESPONDENT’S BRIEF

Charles A. Rosenthal Jr.

Harris County District Attorney

William J. Delmore III*

Scott A. Durfee

Assistant District Attorneys

Harris County, Texas

1201 Franklin, Suite 600

Houston, Texas 77002

(713) 755-5826

*Counsel of Record

Counsel for Respondent

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Questions presented

Table of authorities

Statement

Summary of argument

Argument

• I.Substantive Due Process Under The Fourteenth Amendment
  • A.The appellate record is inadequate to support the recognition of the limited constitutional right asserted by the petitioners
  • B.The Court has adopted an historical approach to the recognition of liberty interests protected under the Due Process Clause
  • C.This nation has no deep-rooted tradition of protecting a right to engage in sodomy
  • D.No tradition of protection exists at any level of specificity of designation of an asserted liberty interest
  • E.Principles of stare decisis counsel against recognition of a new protected liberty interest
• II.Equal Protection Under the Fourteenth Amendment
  • A.The Equal Protection Clause—standard of review
    • Rational-basis review
    • Heightened review is neither sought nor required
  • B.The petitioners have not established their membership in the class for which equal protection relief is sought
  • C.The Texas Legislature did not purposefully discriminate in the passage of section 21.0
  • D.Section 21.06 is rationally related to a legitimate state interest
    • Section 21.06 was enacted for the purpose of avoiding litigation and possible invalidation of the predecessor statute
    • Section 21.06 furthers the legitimate governmental interest of promotion of morality
• III.Summary

Conclusion

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether the petitioners’ criminal prosecutions for the offense of engaging in homosexual conduct, as defined by section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law.

2. Whether the petitioners’ criminal prosecutions under section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code violated their constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, as protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

3. Whether Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), should be overruled.

STATEMENT

A citizen informed Harris County sheriff ’s deputies that an armed man was "going crazy" in the apartment of petitioner Lawrence. Pet. App. 129a. The investigating officers entered the apartment and observed the petitioners engaged in anal sexual intercourse. Id. They were then charged by complaint in a Harris County justice court with the commission of the Class C misdemeanor offense of engaging in homosexual conduct, an offense defined by TEX. PENAL CODE § 21.06(a) (Vernon 1994), as follows: "A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." A Class C misdemeanor is punishable only by a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars. TEX. PENAL CODE § 12.23 (Vernon 1994).

After the petitioners were convicted and fined in the justice court, they gave notice of appeal and the proceedings were transferred to Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 10. The petitioners moved to quash the complaints on various constitutional grounds. Pet. App. 117a, 130a. In support of those motions, the petitioners offered into evidence only the complaints themselves and the supporting "probable cause affidavits" filed by a sheriff ’s deputy in the justice court. See Pet. App. 129a, 141a. The two affidavits contained identical descriptions of the events leading to the filing of the complaints:

Officers dispatched to 794 Normandy # 833 reference to a weapons disturbance. The reportee advised dispatch a black male was going crazy in the apartment and he was armed with a gun. Officers met with the reportee who directed officers to the upstairs apartment. Upon entering the apartment and conducting a search for the armed suspect, officers observed the defendant engaged in deviate sexual conduct namely, anal sex, with another man.

After the county court denied the petitioners’ motions to quash the complaints, they entered pleas of nolo contendere, and the court found them guilty of engaging in homosexual conduct. The court sentenced each petitioner, pursuant to a plea bargain, to payment of a fine in the amount of two hundred dollars, and the petitioners again gave notice of appeal from their convictions.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas initially held that the State’s prosecution of the petitioners under section 21.06 violated the Equal Rights Amendment of the Texas Constitution, with one justice dissenting. The State’s motion for rehearing en banc was granted, however, and on March 15, 2001, the en banc court of appeals rejected all of the petitioners’ constitutional challenges to the enforcement of section 21.06. See Lawrence v. State, 41 S.W.3d 349 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2001, pet. ref ’d) (Pet. App. 4a, et seq.). The en banc opinion of the court of appeals may be briefly summarized as follows:

• Enforcement of the statute prohibiting homosexual conduct does not violate the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, § 3, of the Texas Constitution, because the statute does not implicate fundamental rights or a suspect class, and it has a rational basis in the Texas Legislature’s determination that homosexual sodomy is immoral. The fact that heterosexual sodomy is no longer a criminal offense under Texas law is not constitutionally significant, because the Legislature could rationally distinguish between an act performed with a person of the same sex and a similar act performed with a person of different sex. Pet. App. 13a-18a.
• Enforcement of section 21.06 does not violate the Equal Rights Amendment of the Texas Constitution, because the statute applies equally to both men and women who engage in the prohibited conduct, and it is not the product of prejudice towards persons of either gender. Pet. App. 20a-24a.
• The State’s prosecution of the petitioners for the offense of engaging in homosexual conduct did not violate any constitutional right to privacy under the State or Federal Constitutions, in light of the long history of the imposition of criminal sanctions for such conduct, because it could not be said that the State of Texas or the United States recognized any "fundamental right" to engage in homosexual activity. Pet. App. 25a-31a.

A petition for discretionary review was denied, without written opinion, by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Pet. App. 1a.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

• The record is inadequate to serve as a basis for recognition of a limited constitutional right to engage in extramarital sexual conduct, because the absence of information concerning the petitioners and the circumstances of their offense precludes a determination of whether they would actually benefit from the Court’s recognition of the limited right which they assert. The record is also inadequate to establish that the petitioners belong to the class for which they seek equal protection relief.
• The States of the Union have historically prohibited a wide variety of extramarital sexual conduct, a legal tradition which is utterly inconsistent with any recognition, at this point in time, of a constitutionally protected liberty interest in engaging in any form of sexual conduct with whomever one chooses. Nothing in this Court’s "substantive due process" jurisprudence supports recognition of a constitutional right to engage in sexual misconduct outside the venerable institution of marriage. This Court should adhere to its previous holding on this issue in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), and it should reaffirm that the personal liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from State regulation are limited to those "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental." Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937).
• Since enforcement of the homosexual conduct statute does not interfere with the exercise of a fundamental right, and the statute is not based upon a suspect classification, it must only be rationally related to a permissible state goal in order to withstand equal protection challenge. This legislative proscription of one form of extramarital sexual misconduct is in keeping with longstanding national tradition, and bears a rational relationship to the worthy governmental goals of implementation of public morality and promotion of family values.
• The petitioners cannot meet their burden of establishing a discriminatory purpose to the original enactment of a statute which is facially applicable to both persons of exclusively homosexual orientation and persons who regard themselves as bisexual or heterosexual. When the statute is viewed in historical perspective, it can reasonably be inferred that the Texas Legislature acted with non-discriminatory intent in limiting the scope of the predecessor sodomy statute to fit within the commonly understood parameters of this Court’s then-emerging privacy jurisprudence.

ARGUMENT

I. Substantive Due Process Under The Fourteenth Amendment.

A. The appellate record is inadequate to support the recognition of the limited constitutional right asserted by the petitioners.

The appellate record does not establish that the petitioners would actually benefit from recognition of the particular liberty interest which they assert; therefore, it does not provide this Court with a factual basis for recognizing that interest.

Precise identification of an asserted liberty interest is critical to the determination of whether it falls within the scope of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. An appellate court’s substantive due process analysis "must begin with a careful description of the asserted right," because the "doctrine of judicial selfrestraint" requires a court "to exercise the utmost care whenever [it] is asked to break new ground in this field." Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302 (1993) (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992)). The petitioners initially advocate the recognition of a broadly drawn constitutional right to choose to engage in any "private consensual sexual intimacy with another adult, including one of the same sex." Brief of Petitioners 10. However, the petitioners later clarify that their challenge does not extend to the validity of statutes prohibiting prostitution, incest or adultery, which they describe as implicating additional "state concerns" not present in this case. Id. at 22 n.16. In short, the petitioners are asking the Court to recognize a fundamental right of an adult to engage in private, non-commercial, consensual sex with an unrelated, unmarried adult.

The slim record reveals only that the petitioners are adult males and that they engaged in anal intercourse in an apartment that petitioner Lawrence identified as his residence. It does not answer any of the following questions concerning the factual basis of their constitutional claims:

• Whether the petitioners’ sexual conduct was noncommercial.
• Whether the petitioners’ sexual conduct was mutually consensual.
• Whether the petitioners’ conduct was "private."
• Whether the petitioners are related to one another.
• Whether either of the petitioners is married.
• Whether either (or both) of the petitioners is exclusively homosexual.

While the petitioners possess standing to challenge the constitutionality of a statute under which they have actually been prosecuted and convicted, see Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 443-444 (1972), they should not be permitted to argue that a protected liberty interest exists under some specified set of circumstances without showing that those circumstances actually exist. This Court will not issue an opinion "advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts," and it will not "decide questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case before [it]." North Carolina v. Rice, 404 U.S. 244, 246 (1971) (citations omitted). For example, in cases not involving expressive activity protected by the First Amendment, litigants have no standing to argue that a statute "would be unconstitutional if applied to third parties in hypothetical situations." County Court of Ulster County v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 155 (1979).

In recognizing constitutional liberty interests under the Fourteenth Amendment, appellate courts "must use considerable restraint, including careful adherence to the incremental instruction given by the precise facts of particular cases, as they seek to give further and more precise definition to the right." Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 95-96 (2000) (Kennedy, J., dissenting).

Simply put, the record in this case provides an insufficient foundation for the meaningful review of the important and complex question of whether there is a constitutional right to engage in private, non-commercial, consensual sex with an unrelated, unmarried adult. At best, the record would support only the recognition of an extremely broad right to engage in sexual conduct with any other adult, regardless of any other circumstance which might attend that conduct—a right so broad that the petitioners themselves disavow any claim to it.

Because the record is inadequate to permit this Court to scrutinize and identify the contours and limitations of any protected liberty interest that might be recognized in this case, the State respectfully suggests that this Court dismiss the petition for writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. In the alternative, the respondent asks that the Court affirm the judgment of the Texas court of appeals on ground that the record is inadequate to support an effort to identify a limited constitutional right to engage in sexual conduct.

B. The Court has adopted an historical approach to the recognition of liberty interests protected under the Due Process Clause.

In addressing claims that a state has interfered with an individual’s exercise of a previously unrecognized liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, this Court has looked to the nation’s history and legal traditions to determine whether the asserted interest is actually so fundamental to our system of ordered liberty as to merit constitutional protection from state regulation. For instance, in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1976) (plurality opinion), the Court observed that, "Appropriate limits on substantive due process come not from drawing arbitrary lines but rather from careful ‘respect for the teaching of history [and], solid recognition of the basic values that underlie our society’." Id. at 503 (quoting Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 501 (1965) (Harlan, J., concurring)). Thus the "Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition." Id.

In Bowers, 478 U.S. at 192-194, the Court rejected an asserted fundamental right to engage in homosexual conduct because, in light of pervasive State criminalization of such conduct throughout the nation’s history, it could not seriously be asserted that a right to engage in homosexual sodomy was "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition." Three years later, in Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989) (plurality opinion), the Court noted that in its attempts to "limit and guide interpretation of the [Due Process] Clause," it has "insisted not merely that the interest denominated as a ‘liberty’ be ‘fundamental’ (a concept that in isolation is hard to objectify), but also that it be an interest traditionally protected by our society." Id. at 122-123.

Two of the opinions issued in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), expressed doubt or disagreement that the Due Process Clause protects only those practices, "defined at the most specific level," which were protected by law at the time of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Emphasis upon the nation’s legal traditions appeared only in the dissenting opinions. However, less than a year later, the Court’s opinion in Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292 (1993), unambiguously stated that the "mere novelty" of a claimed constitutional liberty interest was "reason enough to doubt that ‘substantive due process’ sustains it," because it could not be considered "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental." Id. at 303 (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 751 (1987), and Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934)).

This issue of the importance of national legal tradition in substantive due process jurisprudence was resolved in Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997), in which the Court emphasized the necessity of "examining our Nation’s history, legal traditions, and practices" in order to determine whether a claimed liberty interest was, "objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’" and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," and, therefore, merited protection under the Fourteenth Amendment:

Our established method of substantive due process analysis has two primary features: First, we have regularly observed that the Due Process Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition," [Moore v. City of East Cleveland], at 503 (plurality opinion); Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934) ("so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental"), and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," such that "neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 326 (1937). Second, we have required in substantive due process cases a "careful description" of the asserted fundamental liberty interest. Flores, supra, at 302; Collins [v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115 (1992)] at 125; Cruzan [v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990)] at 277-278. Our Nation’s history, legal traditions, and practices thus provide the crucial "guideposts for responsible decisionmaking," Collins, supra, at 125, that direct and restrain our exposition of the Due Process Clause. 521 U.S. at 720-721.

The Court declined to recognize the constitutional liberty interest proposed in Glucksberg—a right to assisted suicide—because its recognition would have required the Court to "reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice" and to elevate to the status of a protected liberty interest a practice that was traditionally prohibited by state law. Id. at 723, 728. In addition to the opinion of the Court, Justice Stevens in a concurring opinion agreed that "[h]istory and tradition provide ample support for refusing to recognize an open-ended constitutional right to commit suicide." Id. at 740 (Stevens, J., concurring).

Since Glucksberg was decided, the Court has had little opportunity to consider the recognition of previously unacknowledged liberty interests under the Due Process Clause. In County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998), the Court held that a determination of whether executive action violated an individual’s right to substantive due process did not require the same historical and traditional analysis utilized in reviewing legislative action. A concurring justice suggested that "history and tradition are the starting point, but not in all cases the ending point of the substantive due process inquiry," leaving room for an "objective assessment of the necessities of law enforcement"; but that opinion did not suggest that Glucksberg was incorrect in its emphasis upon American legal tradition in determining the existence of a substantive due process right in the context of review of a legislative enactment. Id. at 857-858 (Kennedy, J., concurring). A subsequent statement in the same concurring opinion that "objective considerations, including history and precedent, are the controlling principle, regardless of whether the State’s action is legislative or executive in character," id. at 858 (Kennedy, J., concurring), indicated no disagreement with the basic principle expressed in Glucksberg: that recognition of protected liberty interests under the Fourteenth Amendment must be based upon objective historical evidence that a particular practice is a cherished American tradition, "lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of [the] Court." Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720.

C. This nation has no deep-rooted tradition of protecting a right to engage in sodomy.

Turning to the question of whether a right to engage in sodomy is "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental," the Court’s previous resolution of that issue in Bowers v. Hardwick is unassailable. As noted in Bowers, sodomy was a serious criminal offense at common law; it was forbidden by the laws of the original thirteen states at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights; and it was punishable as a crime in all but five of the thirty-seven states in existence at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bowers, 478 U.S. at 192-193.

As further noted in Bowers, sodomy remained punishable as a crime in every state of the Union prior to the year 1961, id. at 193, when Illinois became the first state to adopt the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code approach to decriminalization of some sexual offenses. Id. at 193 n.7.

Our nation’s history has not been rewritten in the seventeen years since Bowers was decided, and that history contradicts any assertion that a right to engage in homosexual anal intercourse has been a valued and protected right of American citizens. The fact that the states have traditionally prohibited the act as a crime is utterly inconsistent with any claim that our legal tradition has treated the choice to engage in that act as a "fundamental" right.

It is true that some change has occurred since Bowers was decided: three more states and the District of Columbia, in appropriate exercise of the democratic process, have repealed or limited the scope of their statutes prohibiting sodomy in general or homosexual sodomy in particular; and a small number of state appellate courts have found that such statutes violate a state constitutional right to privacy. See Brief of Petitioners 23 n.17. The State of Texas is now one of thirteen states in which consensual homosexual sodomy remains a criminal offense. Id. at 27 n.21. The fact that several states have ceased treating sodomy as a criminal offense, however, is no evidence of a national tradition of espousing, honoring or safeguarding a right to engage in deviate sexual intercourse.

The petitioners concede that this Court requires "objective guideposts," such as "history and precedent," in the process of identification of liberty interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. They point to the gradual trend towards decriminalization of consensual sexual behavior among adults as the necessary objective evidence of a fundamental right firmly rooted in the traditions and conscience of American citizens. See Brief of Petitioners 19-25. Four decades of gradual but incomplete decriminalization does not erase a history of one hundred and fifty years of universal reprobation. A recent trend towards uneasy toleration—even a trend involving a majority of the fifty states—cannot establish a tradition "deeply rooted" in our national history and tradition. The petitioners mistake new growth for deep roots.

The petitioners argue that the "consistency of the direction of change" indicates a national consensus sufficient to satisfy the need for objective indicia in identifying a constitutionally protected liberty interest, utilizing a key phrase from the Court’s recent decision in Atkins v. Virginia, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 2249 (2002), in which the Court found that the execution of mentally retarded criminal defendants violated the Eighth Amendment. The petitioners’ argument suffers from a logical flaw in that, prior to 1961, every State treated sodomy as a criminal offense, so only one direction of change is possible. Compare Atkins, 122 S.Ct. at 2263 (Scalia, J., dissenting). A State’s affirmative choice to maintain the status quo demonstrates the absence of consensus. Several states have made such a choice, in that their appellate courts have upheld the constitutionality of statutes prohibiting the commission of sodomy or homosexual conduct. For instance, the Louisiana Supreme Court held in State v. Smith, 766 So.2d 501, 508-510 (La. 2000), that the constitutional right to privacy expressly recognized by that state’s constitution did not extend to the commission of oral or anal sex in private, observing that there "has never been any doubt that the legislature, in the exercise of its police power, has the authority to criminalize the commission of acts which, without regard to the infliction of any other injury, are considered immoral." Accord Missouri v. Walsh, 713 S.W.2d 508 (Mo. 1986) (holding that a prosecution under the Missouri homosexual conduct statute did not violate any constitutional right to privacy under the state or federal constitution). Should just a few more states join Texas, Louisiana and Missouri in upholding the state’s power to punish acts of sodomy, one could argue that the prevailing trend was actually the rejection of a constitutional privacy right extending to consensual sodomy.

In any event, currently evolving standards are an unstable basis for recognition of fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment has long been construed to require consideration of "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958), permitting reliance upon "contemporary values" as evidenced by recent legislative enactments. See Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 331 (1989). In contrast, none of this Court’s precedents so much as suggests that recent legislative activity should be accepted as proof of "deeply rooted" fundamental rights, and the Court’s decisions exploring the possible existence of unrecognized liberty interests under the Fourteenth Amendment have never taken into account rapidly "evolving standards." The approach advocated by the petitioners would require this Court to serve as a micro-managing super-legislature, continually assessing current legislative trends to determine the current extent of protection under the Fourteenth Amendment—an approach which is entirely inconsistent with the Court’s reliance in Glucksberg upon history and legal tradition.

The petitioners also argue that previously recognized "fundamental interests . . . converge in the right asserted here," Brief of Petitioners 11-16, but considered separately, the recognized liberty interests upon which the petitioners rely do not implicate the conduct in question, and no logical process extends their reach when they are lumped together.

The petitioners first assert a constitutionally protected right to choose to enter into "intimate relationships," citing Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 617-618 (1984), but no court has held that this nebulously defined right extended to the protection of sexual misconduct prohibited by State law. For example, in Marcum v. McWhorter, 308 F.3d 635, 641-643 (6th Cir. 2002), the court held that the freedom to choose to enter into personal relationships could not extend to an adulterous relationship, since adultery has been punishable as a crime for centuries. In this case, while the petitioners may have a constitutional right to associate with one another, the right to form an "intimate relationship" does not protect any and all sexual conduct in which they might engage in the context of that relationship.

The petitioners also rely upon the recognized constitutional right to "bodily integrity," but the Court’s decisions regarding bodily integrity generally pertain to unwarranted government invasion of an individual’s body, and the individual’s right to control his own medical treatment, see Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 777-778 (Souter, J., concurring), and those decisions have nothing to do with the manner in which an individual interacts with third parties or invades another person’s body.

The right to privacy in the home has long been recognized under both the First Amendment, see Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564-565 (1969), and the Fourth Amendment, see Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31 (2001). However, the decision in Stanley involved the individual’s freedom of thought, rather than conduct, Stanley 394 U.S. at 565-566, and that decision has never been extended to prohibit state regulation of conduct that does not involve expression protected by the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable police entry and search of the home, but it has never been found to protect one from prosecution for otherwise criminal conduct that occurs within that home.18 See Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 108-110 (1990); Bowers, 478 U.S. at 195-196; Stanley, 394 U.S. at 568 n.11.

By arguing that their asserted liberty interest under the Fourteenth Amendment may be located at the "convergence" of these previously recognized rights, the petitioners implicitly admit that none of them, standing alone, has ever been construed in a fashion that would protect an individual from state prosecution for sexual misconduct occurring in a private residence. The petitioners’ assertion of a patchwork of constitutional rights which do not implicate their conduct does not logically prove that the conduct is in fact protected by a previously unrecognized liberty interest.

D. No tradition of protection exists at any level of specificity of designation of an asserted liberty interest.

The petitioners’ other quarrel with Bowers involves the level of specificity at which the nation’s traditions are to be analyzed in assessing the existence of a protected liberty interest under the Fourteenth Amendment, an issue that does not seem to have been definitively resolved at this time. See Michael H., 491 U.S. 110, 127 n.6 (plurality opinion), 132 (O’Connor, J., concurring); County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 n.8 (1998). Assuming that issue does remain open at this time, it should not be necessary to resolve it in this case, since the petitioners cannot establish a historical tradition of exalting and protecting the conduct for which they were prosecuted at any level of specificity.

At the most specific level, the nation has a longstanding tradition, only recently waning, of criminalizing anal sodomy—the offense once known as "buggery"—as a serious criminal offense. See Bowers, 478 U.S. 192-194; William N. Eskridge Jr., Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet 157-158, 328-337 (App. A) (1999). But even if the topic is broadened to include other acts of extramarital sexual intercourse, such as fornication, adultery, incest, prostitution, etc., the nation’s tradition is still one characterized by prohibition and criminalization. Most of the states have maintained, through most of their history, statutes which made it a criminal offense to engage in fornication and adultery as well as sodomy, and there is no long-standing tradition of protecting the right to engage in any sort of extramarital sexual conduct. Fornication was a punishable offense in colonial times, and it remained illegal in forty states until the early 1970s. See Tracy Shallbettor Stratton, No More Messing Around: Substantive Due Process Challenges to State Laws Prohibiting Fornication, 73 Wash. L. Rev. 767, 780 (1998). As of 1998, it was still a crime in thirteen states and the District of Columbia. See id. at 767 n.2; accord, Richard Green, Griswold’s Legacy: Fornication and Adultery as Crimes, 16 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 545, 546 n.8 (1989).

Adultery was once a capital offense, under some circumstances, in colonial Massachusetts, and it was punished as a crime during the colonial period in almost every jurisdiction. See Oliverson v. West Valley City, 875 F. Supp. 1465, 1474 (D. Utah 1995). Adultery was still punishable as a crime "in most states . . . in 1900," see id. (quoting Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History 13 (1993)), and as of 1996, it remained a crime in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. City of Sherman v. Henry, 928 S.W.2d 464, 470 n.3 (Tex. 1996); Green, supra at n.7.

Thus, the legislatures of the various states have shown significant concern for the sexual morality of the citizenry, and statutes criminalizing extramarital sexual conduct have been pervasive throughout our national history. The constitutionality of those statutes previously has been thought to be "beyond doubt," Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 498 (Goldberg, J. concurring), and recent decisions from the lower courts have held that the statutes are, in fact, constitutional. See, e.g., Henry, 928 S.W.2d at 471-472; Marcum, 308 F.3d at 642-643. Furthermore, criminal prosecutions aside, the United States had no history whatsoever of protecting the right to engage in extramarital sex, at least until a few state appellate courts began in the 1990s to invalidate their sodomy statutes as violative of a state constitutional right to privacy. This Court, in particular, has never recognized any right to engage in extramarital sexual conduct, and it is telling that most of the fundamental liberty interests the Court has recognized under the Fourteenth Amendment are rooted in marriage, procreation and childrearing. An asserted right to engage in homosexual sodomy is actually inimical to the fundamental rights that this Court has endeavored to protect.

The Court catalogued the liberty interests to which it has accorded Fourteenth Amendment protection in Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720, as follows: In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the "liberty" specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights to marry, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); to have children, Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942); to direct the education and upbringing of one’s children, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925); to marital privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); to use contraception, ibid.; Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); to bodily integrity, Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952), and to abortion, Casey, supra. We have also assumed, and strongly suggested, that the Due Process Clause protects the traditional right to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment. Cruzan, 497 U.S., at 278-279.

The conduct at issue in this case has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with those sacred choices. Homosexual sodomy cannot occur within or lead to a marital relationship. It has nothing to do with families or children. The decision to engage in homosexual acts is not like the acts and decisions that this Court previously has found worthy of constitutional protection, and it should not be added to the list of fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The difference between protected conduct within the marriage relationship and unprotected sexual conduct outside marriage has been recognized on a number of occasions, most famously in Justice Harlan’s dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 545-546, 552-553 (1961), in which he expressed the view that "any Constitutional doctrine in this area" must be built upon the division between acts occurring within and without the marital relationship:

Yet the very inclusion of the category of morality among state concerns indicates that society is not limited in its objects only to the physical well-being of the community, but has traditionally concerned itself with the moral soundness of its people as well. Indeed to attempt a line between public behavior and that which is purely consensual or solitary would be to withdraw from community concern a range of subjects with which every society in civilized times has found it necessary to deal. The laws regarding marriage which provide both when the sexual powers may be used and the legal and societal context in which children are born and brought up, as well as laws forbidding adultery, fornication and homosexual practices which express the negative of the proposition, confining sexuality to lawful marriage, form a pattern so deeply pressed into the substance of our social life that any Constitutional doctrine in this area must build upon that basis. . . .

The right of privacy most manifestly is not an absolute. Thus, I would not suggest that adultery, homosexuality, fornication and incest are immune from criminal enquiry, however privately practiced. So much has been explicitly recognized in acknowledging the State’s rightful concern for its people’s moral welfare. See 367 U.S. at pages 545-548, supra. But not to discriminate between what is involved in this case and either the traditional offenses against good morals or crimes which, though they may be committed anywhere, happen to have been committed or concealed in the home, would entirely misconceive the argument that is being made. Adultery, homosexuality and the like are sexual intimacies which the State forbids altogether, but the intimacy of husband and wife is necessarily an essential and accepted feature of the institution of marriage, an institution which the State not only must allow, but which always and in every age it has fostered and protected. It is one thing when the State exerts its power either to forbid extra-marital sexuality altogether, or to say who may marry, but it is quite another when, having acknowledged a marriage and the intimacies inherent in it, it undertakes to regulate by means of the criminal law the details of that intimacy.

As noted in a concurring opinion in Glucksberg, Justice Harlan’s proposed dichotomy "provides a lesson for today," in that his identification of the traditionally protected liberty interest in Poe v. Ullman served to distinguish "between areas in which government traditionally had regulated (sexual relations outside of marriage) and those in which it had not (private marital intimacies) and thus was broad enough to cover the claim at hand without being so broad as to be shot-through by exceptions." 521 U.S. at 770-772 (Souter, J., concurring).

Therefore, should the Court consider expanding the level of specificity with which it identifies the proposed liberty interest at issue in this case, the State urges the Court to draw the line at the threshold of the marital bedroom, in keeping with its past decisions emphasizing the American tradition of marital privacy. Outside that threshold, nothing in our nation’s "history, legal traditions, and practices" offer the "crucial ‘guideposts for responsible decisionmaking’ . . . that direct and restrain [the Court’s] exposition of the Due Process Clause." Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 721 (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992)).

E. Principles of stare decisis counsel against recognition of a new protected liberty interest.

Stare decisis mandates that the Court adhere to its holdings in Bowers. Seventeen years should be considered a very brief period indeed, in the context of the development of fundamental rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the principle of stare decisis counsels against rapid change in this area. If a right is truly fundamental, its public acceptance and societal value should not be the subject of vehement and widespread disagreement. Fundamental rights should be rock solid, and vacillation is inconsistent with the level of durability of rights which should be deemed "fundamental" to our society. "Although adherence to precedent is not rigidly required in constitutional cases, any departure from the doctrine of stare decisis demands special justification." Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203, 212 (1984). The petitioners argue that such special justification exists in the steady "erosion" of support for Bowers and the concomitant advancement of the gay rights movement, Brief of Petitioners 30-31, but the Court reaffirmed in Glucksberg that Bowers utilized the correct mode of analysis in the determination of the existence of a new liberty interest under the Fourteenth Amendment. The fact that a few more states have eased criminal sanctions on sodomy or homosexual conduct since 1986 does not logically affect the validity of the conclusion in Bowers that no right to engage in homosexual conduct can be found "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition." Bowers, 478 U.S. at 192.

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The principle of federalism that encourages the state to undertake such experiments also operates to permit states to decline to participate in them. All change is not for the better, and the right to be first should be accompanied by a right to be among the last to accept a change of debatable social value.

In Atkins, the State of Texas found itself in a minority of states which had not legislatively limited its capital punishment statutes in a particular fashion, and it was obligated to join the herd because of the Eighth Amendment requirement that it comply with "evolving standards" of "contemporary values." 122 S.Ct. at 2247. This is not an Eighth Amendment case, and any indicia of recent "evolving standards" is irrelevant to the identification of those truly fundamental rights which form the core of our democratic society. Courts cannot concern themselves "with cultural trends and political movements" without "usurping the role of the Legislature," and while the Legislature "may not be infallible in its moral and ethical judgments, it alone is constitutionally empowered to decide which evils it will restrain when enacting laws for the public good." Lawrence, 41 S.W.2d at 362. For these reasons, this Court should reject the petitioners’ due process challenge and affirm the judgment of the court below.

II. Equal Protection Under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The petitioners also argue that their prosecution for engaging in homosexual conduct violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They argue that section 21.06 improperly criminalizes sexual conduct with a person of the same sex that is otherwise legal when done with a person of the opposite sex, and they claim that the State cannot articulate any rational basis for this classification.

This challenge fails on two grounds. First, given the evolution of the Texas sodomy statute towards more liberality with respect to sexual activity, petitioners cannot establish that the Texas Legislature purposefully discriminated against persons engaging in homosexual conduct. Instead, this Court reasonably can infer that the legislature, in good faith, incrementally narrowed the State’s neutral proscriptions against sodomy in accordance with contemporaneous developments in due process jurisprudence. As such, instead of being the product of a legislative choice to discriminate against homosexuals, section 21.06 is the vestigial remainder of a predecessor sodomy statute, reduced to its present form as a result of the legislature’s 1973 reform of the Texas Penal Code.

Second, this Court can infer a rational basis for the legislature’s enactment of section 21.06. The State of Texas has a legitimate state interest in legislatively expressing the long-standing moral traditions of the State against homosexual conduct, and in discouraging its citizens—whether they be homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual—from choosing to engage in what is still perceived to be immoral conduct. Section 21.06 rationally furthers that goal by publishing the State’s moral disapproval in a penal code of conduct for its citizens and by creating a disincentive against the conduct. The Legislature reasonably could have concluded that lesser, unenforceable expressions of disapproval would be ineffective to deter that conduct. Moreover, the narrowing of the predecessor sodomy statute to avoid constitutional challenge is in itself a rational basis for the legislative action: viewed in historical context, the Texas Legislature’s decision was a reasonable response to the evolving due process jurisprudence of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This rational-basis analysis is consistent with this Court’s analysis in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), which addressed the rationality of basing legislation on moral tradition. Although Bowers was decided on substantive due process grounds, it stands alone as the only modern case in which this Court has approved moral tradition as a submitted rational basis for legislation. Nothing has changed in the sixteen years since Bowers to justify abandonment of its conclusion.

A. The Equal Protection Clause—standard of review.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment creates no substantive rights. Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793, 799 (1997). Instead, it "embodies a general rule that States must treat like cases alike but may treat unlike cases accordingly." Id.; see also City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 439 (1985) (construing Equal Protection Clause as "essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike").

Unless a classification warrants some form of heightened review because it jeopardizes the exercise of a fundamental right or categorizes on the basis of an inherently suspect characteristic, the Equal Protection Clause requires only that the classification rationally further a legitimate state interest. Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 10 (1992).

1. Rational-basis review.

Rational-basis review is "the most relaxed and tolerant form of judicial scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause." City of Dallas v. Stanglin, 490 U.S. 19, 26 (1989). "In general, the Equal Protection Clause is satisfied so long as there is a plausible policy reason for the classification, the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based rationally may have been considered to be true by the governmental decisionmaker, and the relationship of the classification is not so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational." Nordlinger, 505 U.S. at 11 (citations omitted); see also Romer, 517 U.S. at 632 (1996) ("In the ordinary case, a law will be sustained if it can be said to advance a legitimate government interest, even if the law seems unwise or works to the disadvantage of a particular group, or if the rationale for it seems tenuous.")

The rational-basis standard of review is a paradigm of judicial restraint. F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314 (1993). Rational-basis review in equal protection analysis is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices, nor does it authorize the judiciary to sit as a super-legislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines. Heller v. Doe by Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319 (1993). The Court summarized the evidentiary presumptions in rational-basis review in Heller as follows:

[A] legislature that creates these categories need not "actually articulate at any time the purpose or rationale supporting its classification." Instead, a classification "must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification." A State, moreover, has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification. "[A] legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data." A statute is presumed constitutional, and "[t]he burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it," whether or not the basis has a foundation in the record. Id. at 320-21 (citations omitted).

When social legislation is at issue, the Equal Protection Clause allows the states wide latitude, and the Constitution presumes that even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic processes. Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 440; see also Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 486 (1970) (holding that the rational basis standard "is true to the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal courts no power to impose upon the States their views of what constitutes wise economic or social policy").

2. Heightened review is neither sought nor required.

The petitioners suggest only in a footnote that laws which incorporate a sexual-orientation-based classification, or a gender-based classification to discriminate against homosexuals, should be reviewed pursuant to a heightened scrutiny standard. Brief of Petitioners 32 n.24. This assertion is not implicated by the litigation, briefed by the petitioners, or mandated by law.

The petitioners do not brief their request for heightened review and continue to rely solely on the rationalbasis standard of review in their equal protection challenge to the constitutionality of section 21.06. See Lawrence, 41 S.W.2d at 378 (Anderson, J., dissenting) (in response to majority’s conclusions that there is no fundamental right to engage in sodomy, and homosexuals do not constitute a suspect class, dissent characterizes these conclusions as "irrelevant here because appellants do not raise these arguments") (emphasis added). Accordingly, this Court’s jurisprudence would be ill-served by consideration of a new standard not actually in controversy between the parties. See Heller, 509 U.S. at 319 ("Even if respondents were correct that heightened scrutiny applies, it would be inappropriate for us to apply that standard here. Both parties have been litigating this case for years on the theory of rational-basis review, which . . . does not require the State to place any evidence in the record, let alone the extensive evidentiary showing that would be required for these statutes to survive heightened scrutiny. It would be imprudent and unfair to inject a new standard at this stage in the litigation.").

The appropriateness of applying a rational-basis analysis to classifications based upon sexual orientation is not a matter of controversy in this Court or the federal courts of appeals. In Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), a case in which the amendment in question specifically classified the affected individuals in terms of sexual orientation, this Court nonetheless utilized the rationalbasis test. Id. at 631-636. Likewise, in the federal courts of appeals, the profusion of litigation involving the exclusion of homosexuals from military service has provided ample opportunity for consideration of the appropriate standard of review, and it appears that those courts are unanimous in finding that homosexuals do not constitute a suspect class and that there is no fundamental right to engage in homosexual conduct.

Heightened review of section 21.06 as a statute discriminating on the basis of gender is likewise unnecessary. This Court’s heightened scrutiny in gender cases has been directed at legislative classifications that "create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women." United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 534 (1996). Such heightened scrutiny has been mandated in recognition of the real danger that government policies that professedly are based on reasonable considerations in fact may be reflective of "archaic and overbroad" generalizations about gender, see Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U.S. 498, 506- 507 (1975), or based on "outdated misconceptions concerning the role of females in the home rather than in the ‘marketplace and world of ideas.’ " Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 198-199 (1976). See also Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 441 (1985) (differential treatment of the sexes "very likely reflect[s] outmoded notions of the relative capabilities of men and women"). J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 135 (1994); see also United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. at 532 (stating that the Court will "carefully inspect[ ] official action that closes a door or denies opportunity to women (or to men)"). Enforcement of section 21.06 does not involve gender stereotyping or exclusion. The homosexual conduct statute indulges in no stereotypes about the respective capabilities of men and women, and it does not penalize one gender at the expense of the other. See Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420, 444-45 (1998) (rejecting claim of improper genderbased classification in Fifth Amendment equal protection analysis of statute because "[n]one of the premises on which the statutory classification is grounded can be fairly characterized as an accidental byproduct of a traditional way of thinking about the members of either sex"); Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson, 122 F.3d 692, 702 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that, while California’s Proposition 209 mentions race and gender, it does not logically classify persons by race and gender).

Given these circumstances, heightened review for statutes that classify on the basis of sexual orientation or gender is neither raised nor required in this case.

B. The petitioners have not established their membership in the class for which equal protection relief is sought.

Before rational-basis review is necessary, the petitioners must establish that Texas impermissibly discriminated against them. From the record and the briefs, however, it is unclear what class the petitioners purport to represent in this challenge.

The classifications challenged in the petitioners’ respective motions to quash the complaints against them in the trial court were the criminalization of "consensual sexual acts, including those in private, according to the sex and sexual orientation of those who engage in them," and the "discriminatory classification against gay people." See Pet. App. 119a-120a, 131a-132a. However, the record is silent as to the sexual orientation of the petitioners and whether the charged conduct was occurring consensually. See id., Appendices E, F & G, pp. 107a-141a (entirety of trial court record).

In United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737 (1995), the Court summarized the elements necessary to establish standing:

First, the plaintiff must have suffered an ‘injury in fact’—an invasion of a legally protected interest that is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of . . . Third, it must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Id. at 742-743 (1995). The Court emphasized that, to avoid dismissal on standing grounds, the party who seeks the exercise of jurisdiction in his favor must clearly allege facts demonstrating that he is a proper party to invoke judicial resolution of the dispute, and thereafter support this allegation by evidence adduced at trial. Id. at 743.

In this instance, if the petitioners contend that they were denied equal protection because they belong to the class of individuals who are foreclosed from having deviate sexual intercourse with another person of the same sex, they do not state an equal protection violation. Under the facially neutral conduct prohibitions of section 21.06, everyone in Texas is foreclosed from having deviate sexual intercourse with another person of the same sex. If the petitioners contend, however, that they were denied equal protection because they belong to a class of individuals who have been disproportionately impacted by section 21.06, the record is silent as to whether they in fact belong to such a class.

This Court accords equal protection standing only to "those persons who are personally denied equal treatment." See id. at 743-744 (quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 755 (1984). While the petitioners clearly have been prosecuted under section 21.06, it is not established in this record that they possess the same-sex orientation that they contend is singled out for discrimination by the statute. As such, the writ of certiorari should be dismissed as improvidently granted, or standing should be denied to these petitioners for lack of an adequate record to establish an equal protection violation against them personally.

C. The Texas Legislature did not purposefully discriminate in the passage of section 21.06.

Although the petitioners assert that the "group targeted and harmed by the Homosexual Conduct Law is, of course, gay people," see Brief of Petitioners 33, and much of their briefing is related to the unequal protection of the laws with respect to homosexuals, see id. at 40-50, section 21.06 does not expressly classify its offenders on the basis of their sexual orientation. Rather, it criminalizes homosexual conduct without reference to a defendant’s sexual orientation. Lawrence, 41 S.W.2d at 353; see also Editors of the Harvard Law Review, Sexual Orientation and the Law, at 16 (Harvard University Press 1990) ("Although litigants and courts have assumed that [samesex] sodomy statutes classify based on sexual preference, the statutes actually prevent all persons from engaging in same-sex sodomy, regardless of sexual orientation.").

The focus of section 21.06 on conduct, rather than sexual orientation, does not foreclose equal protection review. A statute, though facially neutral, may still be challenged as constitutionally infirm under the Equal Protection Clause if the challenger can prove that the statute was enacted because of a discriminatory purpose. Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279 (1979). This intent component is significant: equal protection jurisprudence focuses on the purposeful marginalization of disfavored groups. See id. at 274, 279 (holding that "discriminatory purpose" implies more than intent as volition or intent as awareness of the consequences; it implies that the decisionmaker [in that case a state legislature] selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least partly "because of," and not merely "in spite of," its adverse effects upon an identifiable group); Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 372-73 (1991) (O’Connor, J., concurring) ("An unwavering line of cases from this Court holds that a violation of the Equal Protection Clause requires state action motivated by discriminatory intent; the disproportionate effects of state action are not sufficient to establish such a violation.").

As such, assuming that petitioners appear as representatives of the class of individuals who are disproportionately affected by section 21.06, it is incumbent upon them to prove the purposeful intent of the Texas Legislature in order to perfect their equal protection claim. Cf. State v. Baxley, 656 So.2d 973, 978 (La. 1995) ("Given the presumption of the constitutionality of legislation which does not classify on its face, it is incumbent upon the challenger of the legislation to prove the discriminatory purpose. In the present case, the record is devoid of any evidence that the crime against nature statute was enacted for the purpose of discriminating against gay men and lesbians. Therefore, the statute is not constitutionally infirm on these grounds.").

The record on appeal—which essentially consists of complaints, "probable cause affidavits," motions to quash, and pleas of guilty—provides no such evidence. Likewise, the petitioners have submitted no evidence of the Legislature’s intent to invidiously discriminate.

Although commentators have speculated that section 21.06 was enacted in its present form because of political concerns about the impact of decriminalizing homosexual conduct, an alternative interpretation of the Legislature’s intent can be inferred from the historical context within which section 21.06 was passed.

In 1854, the State’s Fifth Legislature determined that the conduct engaged in by the petitioners in this case—homosexual anal intercourse—should be punishable by hard labor in the penitentiary for up to five years: Sec. 40. If any person shall commit the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with any beast, he shall be punished by confinement to hard labor in the Penitentiary not exceeding five years. Act of February 9, 1854, 5th Leg., R.S., ch. XLIX, § 40, 1854 Tex. Gen. Laws 58, 66.

Six years later, the Eighth Legislature increased both the minimum and maximum periods of confinement to be assessed upon conviction of that offense: Art. 399c. If any person shall commit with mankind or beast the abominable and detestable crime against nature, he shall be deemed guilty of sodomy, and on conviction thereof, he shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than five nor more than fifteen years. Act of February 11, 1860, 8th Leg., R.S., ch. 74, 1860 Tex. Gen. Laws 95, 97.

A Reconstruction-era Texas Supreme Court found the prohibition of the "abominable and detestable crime against nature" to be too vague to be enforced, Fennell v. State, 32 Tex. 378 (1869), but by 1893, the Court of Criminal Appeals was willing to look to the common law for guidance in determining what constituted a "crime against nature," and it found that the conduct prohibited by the statute was anal sexual intercourse. See Prindle v. State, 21 S.W. 360 (Tex. Crim. App. 1893). In 1943, the statute was amended to the following form:

Article 524. Sodomy.

Whoever has carnal copulation with a beast, or in an opening of the body, except sexual parts, with another human being, or whoever shall use his mouth on the sexual parts of another human being for the purpose of having carnal copulation, or who shall voluntarily permit the use of his own sexual parts in a lewd and lascivious manner by any minor, shall be guilty of sodomy, and upon conviction thereof shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than two (2) nor more than fifteen (15) years. Act of April 5, 1943, 48th Leg., R.S., ch. 112, § 1, 1943 Tex. Gen. Laws 194 (hereinafter "article 524").

In 1965, this Court recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), a constitutional right of privacy forbidding government regulation of a married couple’s access to the use of contraceptives. Decisions followed that further delineated similar rights of privacy, including Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

As a result of those decisions, article 524 came under attack in federal district court, see Buchanan v. Batchelor, 308 F. Supp. 729 (N.D. Tex. 1970), rev’d on other grounds, 401 U.S. 989 (1971), and in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. See Pruett v. State, 463 S.W.2d 191 (Tex. Crim. App. 1971). The Buchanan court, a three-judge panel, declared article 524 unconstitutional because it violated the liberty of married couples in their private conduct by subjecting them to felony prosecution for private acts of sodomy, "an intimate relation of husband and wife." Id. at 732-33. The court declined to extend its holding to homosexual conduct, specifically noting the limited applicability of Griswold to the marital context. Id. at 733. The Court thus held article 524 unconstitutional "insofar as it reaches the private, consensual acts of married couples." Id. at 735.

Although Buchanan was later reversed by this Court and remanded for consideration as to whether abstention was necessary in light of the Court’s decision in Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately declined to find article 524 unconstitutional in Pruett, these cases were certainly within the constructive knowledge of the 1973 Texas Legislature as it considered what to do with the sodomy statute.

As such, it is a reasonable inference from this context that the Texas Legislature’s enactment of section 21.06 in 1973 was not purposefully discriminatory against homosexuals, but was instead a reform of article 524 in accordance with what then appeared to be the direction in which constitutional privacy law was heading. The reformatory nature of the amendments is indicated as well by the Legislature’s reduction of the offense from a felony punishable by confinement in the penitentiary for a minimum two years to a misdemeanor punishable only by a fine of up to two hundred dollars, and the Legislature’s formulation of the statute to forbid only certain kinds of homosexual conduct.

The residual differences left over from this kind of benign incremental reform do not amount to purposeful discrimination. See, e.g., McDonald v. Board of Election Commissioners of Chicago, 394 U.S. 802, 809 (1969) ("[A] legislature traditionally has been allowed to take reform ‘one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind,’ and a legislature need not run the risk of losing an entire remedial scheme simply because it failed, through inadvertence or otherwise, to cover every evil that might conceivably have been attacked.") (citations omitted); F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 316 (1993) ("[S]cope-of-coverage provisions are unavoidable components of most economic or social legislation. [The necessity of drawing a line of demarcation] renders the precise coordinates of the resulting legislative judgment virtually unreviewable, since the legislature must be allowed leeway to approach a perceived problem incrementally."). Because there is no evidence establishing that the Texas Legislature acted with discriminatory intent in 1973, the presumption of constitutionality persists. The petitioners have not demonstrated purposeful discrimination against the class they purport to represent.

D. Section 21.06 is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

If a rational-basis analysis is necessary with regard to the promulgation of section 21.06, the State’s legitimate interest in protecting its statute from constitutional challenge was in itself a rational basis for legislative action. In addition, section 21.06 rationally furthers other legitimate state interests, namely, the continued expression of the State’s long-standing moral disapproval of homosexual conduct, and the deterrence of such immoral sexual activity, particularly with regard to the contemplated conduct of heterosexuals and bisexuals.

1. Section 21.06 was enacted for the purpose of avoiding litigation and possible invalidation of the predecessor statute.

As noted above, section 21.06 was enacted by a 1973 Texas Legislature which was cognizant of changing judicial attitudes towards the constitutionality of legislation restricting private decisions of married couples. Accordingly, the decision to narrow article 524 was not the irrational product of invidious discrimination against homosexuals, but rather a reasonable retrenchment of the statute to address what may have been perceived to be a constitutional limitation of state authority to regulate marital behavior. No similar concerns existed at that time with respect to the possible constitutional protection of homosexual conduct, thus vitiating the need for immediate legislative reform in that direction.

For the reasons more fully expressed supra, this neutral motivation for the amendment of article 524 into the present-day statute—i.e., to avoid a potentially successful challenge to the State’s sodomy law by individuals engaging in consensual heterosexual conduct—represents a rational basis for the classification of conduct upon which section 21.06 is based.

2. Section 21.06 furthers the legitimate governmental interest of promotion of morality.

The promotion of morality has long been recognized as a lawful function of government. See, e.g., Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U.S. 27, 31 (1884) (holding that the Equal Protection Clause was not intended "to interfere with the power of the state . . . to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people"); Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U.S. 105, 111-12 (1928) ("The police power may be exerted in the form of state legislation . . . only when such legislation bears a real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or some other phase of the general welfare."); Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32 (1954) (identifying "[p]ublic safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet [and] law and order" as appropriate "application[s] of the police power to municipal affairs"); Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560, 569 (1991) (plurality opinion) (holding that police powers of the State extend to "public health, safety and morals").

Similarly, protection of family and morality has motivated many valid governmental actions. See, e.g., Barnes, 501 U.S. at 569 (recognizing legislature’s right to "protect ‘the social interest in order and morality’" in enacting public indecency statutes); Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110, 131 (1989) (protection of "integrity of the marital union" as legitimate state interest for denying third-party standing to challenge legitimacy of birth); City of Dallas v. Stanglin, 490 U.S. 19, 27 (1989) (protection of teenagers from "corrupting influences" as legitimate state interest for limiting access to dancehall); Ginsberg v. United States, 390 U.S. 629, 639 (1968) (approving legislature’s legislation against distribution of "girlie magazines" to minors because "legislature could properly conclude that parents and others . . . who have this primary responsibility for children’s well-being are entitled to the support of laws designed to aid discharge of that responsibility").

This moral component was at the core of the Fifth Circuit’s decision affirming the constitutionality of section 21.06 in 1985. Sitting en banc, that court found that "in view of the strong objection to homosexual conduct, which has prevailed in Western culture for the past seven centuries," section 21.06 was rationally related to the implementation of "morality, a permissible state goal," and, therefore, did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Baker v. Wade, 769 F.2d 289, 292 (5th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 478 U.S. 1022 (1986). Other courts at that time reached similar conclusions. See Dronenburg v. Zech, 741 F.2d 1388, 1397 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (upholding naval regulations excluding homosexuals from service as a permissible implementation of public morality, and noting the unlikelihood that "very many laws exist whose ultimate justification does not rest upon the society’s morality"); State v. Walsh, 713 S.W.2d 508, 511-12 (Mo. 1986) (holding that "punishing homosexual acts as a Class A misdemeanor . . . is rationally related to the State’s constitutionally permissible objective of implementing and promoting the public morality").

Shortly before the courts in Baker and Dronenburg upheld legislation related to homosexual conduct, the Eleventh Circuit reached an opposite conclusion with respect to Georgia’s sodomy statute. See Hardwick v. Bowers, 760 F.2d 1202, 1212 (11th Cir. 1985) (holding that the Georgia statute implicated Hardwick’s fundamental rights because his homosexual activity was a private and intimate association placed beyond the reach of state regulation by the Ninth Amendment and the "notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment").

This Court granted the Georgia Attorney General’s petition for certiorari, and declined to invalidate Georgia’s sodomy statute, finding that there was no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. Bowers, 478 U.S. at 191. In reaching this conclusion, the Court noted the long history of moral disapproval of homosexual conduct, noting that "[p]roscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots," and that, until 1961, sodomy had been illegal in all fifty states. Id. at 192; see also id. at 196-97 (Burger, C.J., concurring) (detailing historical genesis of sodomy statutes).

This Court dismissed Hardwick’s assertion that there was no rational basis for the Georgia sodomy statute, explicitly rejecting the notion that laws may not be based upon perceptions of morality:

Even if the conduct at issue here is not a fundamental right, respondent asserts that there must be a rational basis for the law and that there is none in this case other than the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable. This is said to be an inadequate rationale to support the law. The law, however, is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed. Even respondent makes no such claim, but insists that majority sentiments about the morality of homosexuality should be declared inadequate. We do not agree, and are unpersuaded that the sodomy laws of some 25 States should be invalidated on this basis. Id. at 196. This Court shortly thereafter declined to review the constitutionality of section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code. See Baker v. Wade, 478 U.S. 1022 (1986) (denying petition for writ of certiorari).

Nothing in this Court’s jurisprudence since Bowers justifies revisiting its conclusion that morality constitutes an appropriate basis for legislative action. Petitioners cite Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) as antithetical to Bowers, but a careful review of Romer indicates that its application of equal protection principles to an overbroad state constitutional amendment does not implicate the legislature’s authority to prohibit what has traditionally been perceived as immoral conduct.

In Romer, the citizens of the State of Colorado approved a constitutional amendment that invalidated municipal ordinances banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and prohibited all legislative, executive or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect homosexuals, lesbians, or bisexuals. See id. at 627. The Court summarized the impact of the amendment:

Homosexuals, by state decree, are put in a solitary class with respect to transactions and relations in both the private and governmental spheres. The amendment withdraws from homosexuals, but no others, specific legal protection from the injuries caused by discrimination, and it forbids reinstatement of these laws and policies. Id.

In overturning the amendment on equal protection grounds, the Court found that the statute "has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group" that is "at once too narrow and too broad," identifying "persons by a single trait and then den[ying] them protection across the board." Id. at 632-33. In other words, the Colorado initiative was held unconstitutional because it went beyond punishment of the act of engaging in homosexual conduct and sought to disenfranchise individuals because of the mere tendency or predilection to engage in such conduct.

Section 21.06 does not suffer from that flaw. It is the homosexual conduct that is viewed as immoral, and a statute rendering that conduct illegal is obviously related to the goal of discouraging the conduct and thereby implementing morality. A statute that, say, prohibited all individuals with a homosexual orientation from attending public schools would not be rationally related to that goal and would violate the Equal Protection Clause, but a statute imposing criminal liability only upon persons who actually engage in homosexual conduct is perfectly tailored to implement the communal belief that the conduct is wrong and should be discouraged.

Notably, the issue of morality as a rational basis for the amendment was not implicated in Romer. The lawyers challenging Amendment 2 did not ask this Court to overrule Bowers, and the lawyers for the State of Colorado avoided relying on it in their arguments. Romer, 517 U.S. at 635 (identifying primary rationale for Amendment 2 as "respect for other citizens’ freedom of association" and Colorado’s "interest in conserving resources to fight discrimination against other groups"); 517 U.S. at 641 (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("Respondents’ briefs did not urge overruling Bowers, and at oral argument respondents’ counsel expressly disavowed any intent to seek such overruling."); see generally Thomas C. Grey, Bowers v. Hardwick Diminished, 68 U. Colo. L. Rev. 373, 375 & notes 13-14 (1997) (discussing general absence of advocacy related to Bowers in the Romer litigation).

In the absence of any party raising morality as a justification, the Romer court prudentially declined to raise the issue itself. As the court below observed: Romer . . . does not disavow the Court’s previous holding in Bowers; it does not elevate homosexuals to a suspect class; it does not suggest that statutes prohibiting homosexual conduct violate the Equal Protection Clause; and it does not challenge the concept that the preservation and protection of morality is a legitimate state interest.

Lawrence, 41 S.W.3d at 355. As such, Romer does not contradict the ultimate conclusion in Bowers—that majoritarian moral standards can be a rational basis for prohibitions against certain homosexual conduct. The State does not dispute that invidious intent can be inferred from classifications based on race, gender, economic status, or mental retardation. See, e.g., Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429 (1984) (reversing order denying custody based on racial considerations); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973) (reversing gender-based classification in distribution of military benefits); United States Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973) (striking down grossly overbroad classification discriminating against "individuals who live in households containing one or more members who are unrelated to the rest"); Cleburne, 473 U.S. 432 (1985) (striking down zoning restriction against group home for mentally retarded based on negative reactions of neighbors to proximity). In those cases, the Court fairly reduced the asserted bases for discriminatory classifications to unsubstantiated negative views about the affected individuals. See Romer, 517 U.S. at 635 (prohibiting "status-based" legislation that is "a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake"). Those classifications do not implicate a moral component, though, as does a classification identifying types of homosexual conduct. As previously noted, the history of prohibitions against homosexual sodomy—in the common law, American law, and Texas law—is ancient, and the legislature’s deference to these moral traditions is appropriate and rational.

The prohibition of homosexual conduct in section 21.06 represents the reasoned judgment of the Texas Legislature that such conduct is immoral and should be deterred. Although the application of sodomy statutes is not common because of the nature and circumstances of the offense, the statutes, like many others, express a baseline standard expressing the core moral beliefs of the people of the State. Whether this Court perceives this position to be wise or unwise, long-established principles of federalism dictate that the Court defer to the Texas Legislature’s judgment and to the collective good sense of the people of the State of Texas, in their effort to enforce public morality and promote family values through the promulgation of penal statutes such as section 21.06.

III. Summary.

Public opinion regarding moral issues may change over time, but what has not changed is the understanding that government may require adherence to certain widely accepted moral standards and sanction deviation from those standards, so long as it does not interfere with constitutionally protected liberties. The legislature exists so that laws can be repealed or modified to match prevailing views regarding what is right and wrong, and so that the citizens’ elected representatives can fine-tune the severity of the penalties to be attached to wrongful conduct. Perhaps homosexual conduct is not now universally regarded with the same abhorrence it inspired at the time of the adoption of our Federal Constitution, but any lag in legislative response to a mere change of public opinion—if such a lag actually exists—cannot and must not constitute the basis for a finding that the legislature’s original enactment exceeded its constitutional authority.

As stated in Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 735-36, there is "an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality" of the statute in question; and the affirmance of the decision of the court of appeals in this case will "permit this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society."

CONCLUSION

It is respectfully submitted that the petition for writ of certiorari should be dismissed as improvidently granted, or, in the alternative, that the judgment of the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District should be in all things affirmed.

Charles A. Rosenthal Jr.

Harris County District Attorney

William J. Delmore III*

Scott A. Durfee

Assistant District Attorneys

Harris County, Texas

1201 Franklin, Suite 600

Houston, Texas 77002

(713) 755-5826

*Counsel of Record

Counsel for Respondent

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JOHN GEDDES LAWRENCE and TYRON GARNER, Appellants

v.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

in writ of certiorari to the court of appeals of Texas, fourteenth district

No. 02-102. Argued March 26, 2003-Decided June 26, 2003

Summary Of Argument

Responding to a reported weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered petitioner Lawrence's apartment and saw him and another adult man, petitioner Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Petitioners were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held,inter alia, that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court considered Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186, controlling on that point.

Held: The Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. pp. 3-18.

(a) Resolution of this case depends on whether petitioners were free as adults to engage in private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. For this inquiry the Court deems it necessary to reconsider its Bowers holding. The Bowers Court's initial substantive statement—"The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy ... ," 478 U. S., at 190—discloses the Court's failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it said that marriage is just about the right to have sexual intercourse. Although the laws involved in Bowers and here purport to do not more than prohibit a particular sexual act, their penalties and purposes have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. They seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. pp. 3-6.

(b) Having misapprehended the liberty claim presented to it, the Bowers Court stated that proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots. 478 U. S., at 192. It should be noted, however, that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit nonprocreative sexual activity more generally, whether between men and women or men and men. Moreover, early sodomy laws seem not to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private. Instead, sodomy prosecutions often involved predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent: relations between men and minor girls or boys, between adults involving force, between adults implicating disparity in status, or between men and animals. The longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which Bowers placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of nonprocreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character. Far from possessing "ancient roots," ibid., American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century. Even now, only nine States have singled out same-sex relations for criminal prosecution. Thus, the historical grounds relied upon in Bowers are more complex than the majority opinion and the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Burger there indicated. They are not without doubt and, at the very least, are overstated. The Bowers Court was, of course, making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral, but this Court's obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate its own moral code, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 850. The Nation's laws and traditions in the past half century are most relevant here. They show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U. S. 833, 857. pp. 6-12.

(c) Bowers' deficiencies became even more apparent in the years following its announcement. The 25 States with laws prohibiting the conduct referenced in Bowers are reduced now to 13, of which 4 enforce their laws only against homosexual conduct. In those States, including Texas, that still proscribe sodomy (whether for same-sex or heterosexual conduct), there is a pattern of nonenforcement with respect to consenting adults acting in private. Casey, supra, at 851—which confirmed that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education—and Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 624—which struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals—cast Bowers' holding into even more doubt. The stigma the Texas criminal statute imposes, moreover, is not trivial. Although the offense is but a minor misdemeanor, it remains a criminal offense with all that imports for the dignity of the persons charged, including notation of convictions on their records and on job application forms, and registration as sex offenders under state law. Where a case's foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance. In the United States, criticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing, disapproving of its reasoning in all respects, not just as to its historical assumptions. And, to the extent Bowers relied on values shared with a wider civilization, the case's reasoning and holding have been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, and that other nations have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent. Stare decisis is not an inexorable command. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828. Bowers' holding has not induced detrimental reliance of the sort that could counsel against overturning it once there are compelling reasons to do so. Casey, supra, at 855-856. Bowers causes uncertainty, for the precedents before and after it contradict its central holding. pp. 12-17.

(d) Bowers' rationale does not withstand careful analysis. In his dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice Stevens concluded that (1) the fact a State's governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice, and (2) individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of "liberty" protected by due process. That analysis should have controlled Bowers, and it controls here. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, is not correct today, and is hereby overruled. This case does not involve minors, persons who might be injured or coerced, those who might not easily refuse consent, or public conduct or prostitution. It does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. Petitioners' right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention. Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the individual's personal and private life. pp. 17-18.

41 S. W. 3d 349, reversed and remanded.

Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. O'Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Thomas, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.

Argument

Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.

I

The question before the Court is the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.

In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The right of the police to enter does not seem to have been questioned. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody over night, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace.

The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." App. to Pet. for Cert. 127a, 139a. The applicable state law is Tex. Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) (2003). It provides: "A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." The statute defines "[d]eviate sexual intercourse" as follows:

• (A) any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person; or
• (B) the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object." §21.01(1).

The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Tex. Const., Art. 1, §3a. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. App. to Pet. for Cert. 107a-110a.

The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. 41 S. W. 3d 349 (Tex. App. 2001). The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. Bowers then being authoritative, this was proper.

We granted certiorari, 537 U. S. 1044 (2002), to consider three questions:

• Whether Petitioners' criminal convictions under the Texas 'Homosexual Conduct' law—which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples—violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of laws?
• Whether Petitioners' criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
• Whether Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986), should be overruled?" Pet. for Cert. i.

The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.

II

We conclude the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. For this inquiry we deem it necessary to reconsider the Court's holding in Bowers.

There are broad statements of the substantive reach of liberty under the Due Process Clause in earlier cases, including Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923); but the most pertinent beginning point is our decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965).

In Griswold the Court invalidated a state law prohibiting the use of drugs or devices of contraception and counseling or aiding and abetting the use of contraceptives. The Court described the protected interest as a right to privacy and placed emphasis on the marriage relation and the protected space of the marital bedroom. Id., at 485.

After Griswold it was established that the right to make certain decisions regarding sexual conduct extends beyond the marital relationship. In Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972), the Court invalidated a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons. The case was decided under the Equal Protection Clause, id., at 454; but with respect to unmarried persons, the Court went on to state the fundamental proposition that the law impaired the exercise of their personal rights, ibid. It quoted from the statement of the Court of Appeals finding the law to be in conflict with fundamental human rights, and it followed with this statement of its own:"It is true that in Griswold the right of privacy in question inhered in the marital relationship... . If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." Id., at 453.

The opinions in Griswold and Eisenstadt were part of the background for the decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973). As is well known, the case involved a challenge to the Texas law prohibiting abortions, but the laws of other States were affected as well. Although the Court held the woman's rights were not absolute, her right to elect an abortion did have real and substantial protection as an exercise of her liberty under the Due Process Clause. The Court cited cases that protect spatial freedom and cases that go well beyond it. Roe recognized the right of a woman to make certain fundamental decisions affecting her destiny and confirmed once more that the protection of liberty under the Due Process Clause has a substantive dimension of fundamental significance in defining the rights of the person.

In Carey v. Population Services Int'l, 431 U. S. 678 (1977), the Court confronted a New York law forbidding sale or distribution of contraceptive devices to persons under 16 years of age. Although there was no single opinion for the Court, the law was invalidated. Both Eisenstadt and Carey, as well as the holding and rationale in Roe, confirmed that the reasoning of Griswold could not be confined to the protection of rights of married adults. This was the state of the law with respect to some of the most relevant cases when the Court considered Bowers v. Hardwick.

The facts in Bowers had some similarities to the instant case. A police officer, whose right to enter seems not to have been in question, observed Hardwick, in his own bedroom, engaging in intimate sexual conduct with another adult male. The conduct was in violation of a Georgia statute making it a criminal offense to engage in sodomy. One difference between the two cases is that the Georgia statute prohibited the conduct whether or not the participants were of the same sex, while the Texas statute, as we have seen, applies only to participants of the same sex. Hardwick was not prosecuted, but he brought an action in federal court to declare the state statute invalid. He alleged he was a practicing homosexual and that the criminal prohibition violated rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution. The Court, in an opinion by Justice White, sustained the Georgia law. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Powell joined the opinion of the Court and filed separate, concurring opinions. Four Justices dissented. 478 U. S., at 199 (opinion of Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, JJ.); id., at 214 (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ.).

The Court began its substantive discussion in Bowers as follows: "The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time." Id., at 190. That statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court's own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.

This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects. It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.

Having misapprehended the claim of liberty there presented to it, and thus stating the claim to be whether there is a fundamental right to engage in consensual sodomy, the Bowers Court said: "Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots." Id., at 192. In academic writings, and in many of the scholarly amicus briefs filed to assist the Court in this case, there are fundamental criticisms of the historical premises relied upon by the majority and concurring opinions in Bowers. Brief for Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae 16-17; Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 15-21; Brief for Professors of History et al. as Amici Curiae 3-10. We need not enter this debate in the attempt to reach a definitive historical judgment, but the following considerations counsel against adopting the definitive conclusions upon which Bowers placed such reliance.

At the outset it should be noted that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Beginning in colonial times there were prohibitions of sodomy derived from the English criminal laws passed in the first instance by the Reformation Parliament of 1533. The English prohibition was understood to include relations between men and women as well as relations between men and men. See, e.g., King v. Wiseman, 92 Eng. Rep. 774, 775 (K. B. 1718) (interpreting "mankind" in Act of 1533 as including women and girls). Nineteenth-century commentators similarly read American sodomy, buggery, and crime-against-nature statutes as criminalizing certain relations between men and women and between men and men. See, e.g., 2 J. Bishop, Criminal Law §1028 (1858); 2 J. Chitty, Criminal Law 47-50 (5th Am. ed. 1847); R. Desty, A Compendium of American Criminal Law 143 (1882); J. May, The Law of Crimes §203 (2d ed. 1893). The absence of legal prohibitions focusing on homosexual conduct may be explained in part by noting that according to some scholars the concept of the homosexual as a distinct category of person did not emerge until the late 19th century. See, e.g., J. Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality 10 (1995); J. D'Emilio & E. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 121 (2d ed. 1997) ("The modern terms homosexuality and heterosexuality do not apply to an era that had not yet articulated these distinctions"). Thus early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit nonprocreative sexual activity more generally. This does not suggest approval of homosexual conduct. It does tend to show that this particular form of conduct was not thought of as a separate category from like conduct between heterosexual persons.

Laws prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private. A substantial number of sodomy prosecutions and convictions for which there are surviving records were for predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent, as in the case of a minor or the victim of an assault. As to these, one purpose for the prohibitions was to ensure there would be no lack of coverage if a predator committed a sexual assault that did not constitute rape as defined by the criminal law. Thus the model sodomy indictments presented in a 19th-century treatise, see 2 Chitty, supra, at 49, addressed the predatory acts of an adult man against a minor girl or minor boy. Instead of targeting relations between consenting adults in private, 19th-century sodomy prosecutions typically involved relations between men and minor girls or minor boys, relations between adults involving force, relations between adults implicating disparity in status, or relations between men and animals.

To the extent that there were any prosecutions for the acts in question, 19th-century evidence rules imposed a burden that would make a conviction more difficult to obtain even taking into account the problems always inherent in prosecuting consensual acts committed in private. Under then-prevailing standards, a man could not be convicted of sodomy based upon testimony of a consenting partner, because the partner was considered an accomplice. A partner's testimony, however, was admissible if he or she had not consented to the act or was a minor, and therefore incapable of consent. See, e.g., F. Wharton, Criminal Law 443 (2d ed. 1852); 1 F. Wharton, Criminal Law 512 (8th ed. 1880). The rule may explain in part the infrequency of these prosecutions. In all events that infrequency makes it difficult to say that society approved of a rigorous and systematic punishment of the consensual acts committed in private and by adults. The longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which the Bowers decision placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of nonprocreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character.

The policy of punishing consenting adults for private acts was not much discussed in the early legal literature. We can infer that one reason for this was the very private nature of the conduct. Despite the absence of prosecutions, there may have been periods in which there was public criticism of homosexuals as such and an insistence that the criminal laws be enforced to discourage their practices. But far from possessing "ancient roots," Bowers, 478 U. S., at 192, American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century. The reported decisions concerning the prosecution of consensual, homosexual sodomy between adults for the years 1880-1995 are not always clear in the details, but a significant number involved conduct in a public place. See Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 14-15, and n. 18.

It was not until the 1970's that any State singled out same-sex relations for criminal prosecution, and only nine States have done so. See 1977 Ark. Gen. Acts no. 828; 1983 Kan. Sess. Laws p. 652; 1974 Ky. Acts p. 847; 1977 Mo. Laws p. 687; 1973 Mont. Laws p. 1339; 1977 Nev. Stats. p. 1632; 1989 Tenn. Pub. Acts ch. 591; 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 399; see also Post v. State, 715 P. 2d 1105 (Okla. Crim. App. 1986) (sodomy law invalidated as applied to different-sex couples). Post-Bowers even some of these States did not adhere to the policy of suppressing homosexual conduct. Over the course of the last decades, States with same-sex prohibitions have moved toward abolishing them. See, e.g., Jegley v. Picado, 349 Ark. 600, 80 S. W. 3d 332 (2002); Gryczan v. State, 283 Mont. 433, 942 P. 2d 112 (1997); Campbell v. Sundquist, 926 S. W. 2d 250 (Tenn. App. 1996); Commonwealth v. Wasson, 842 S. W. 2d 487 (Ky. 1992); see also 1993 Nev. Stats. p. 518 (repealing Nev. Rev. Stat. §201.193).

In summary, the historical grounds relied upon in Bowers are more complex than the majority opinion and the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Burger indicate. Their historical premises are not without doubt and, at the very least, are overstated.

It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law. "Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code." Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 850 (1992).

Chief Justice Burger joined the opinion for the Court in Bowers and further explained his views as follows: "Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeao-Christian moral and ethical standards." 478 U. S., at 196. As with Justice White's assumptions about history, scholarship casts some doubt on the sweeping nature of the statement by Chief Justice Burger as it pertains to private homosexual conduct between consenting adults. See, e.g., Eskridge, Hardwick and Historiography, 1999 U. Ill. L. Rev. 631, 656. In all events we think that our laws and traditions in the past half century are of most relevance here. These references show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex. "[H]istory and tradition are the starting point but not in all cases the ending point of the substantive due process inquiry." County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U. S. 833, 857 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring).

This emerging recognition should have been apparent when Bowers was decided. In 1955 the American Law Institute promulgated the Model Penal Code and made clear that it did not recommend or provide for "criminal penalties for consensual sexual relations conducted in private." ALI, Model Penal Code §213.2, Comment 2, p. 372 (1980). It justified its decision on three grounds: (1) The prohibitions undermined respect for the law by penalizing conduct many people engaged in; (2) the statutes regulated private conduct not harmful to others; and (3) the laws were arbitrarily enforced and thus invited the danger of blackmail. ALI, Model Penal Code, Commentary 277-280 (Tent. Draft No. 4, 1955). In 1961 Illinois changed its laws to conform to the Model Penal Code. Other States soon followed. Brief for Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae 15-16.

In Bowers the Court referred to the fact that before 1961 all 50 States had outlawed sodomy, and that at the time of the Court's decision 24 States and the District of Columbia had sodomy laws. 478 U. S., at 192-193. Justice Powell pointed out that these prohibitions often were being ignored, however. Georgia, for instance, had not sought to enforce its law for decades. Id., at 197-198, n. 2 ("The history of nonenforcement suggests the moribund character today of laws criminalizing this type of private, consensual conduct")

The sweeping references by Chief Justice Burger to the history of Western civilization and to Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards did not take account of other authorities pointing in an opposite direction. A committee advising the British Parliament recommended in 1957 repeal of laws punishing homosexual conduct. The Wolfenden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution (1963). Parliament enacted the substance of those recommendations 10 years later. Sexual Offences Act 1967, §1.

Of even more importance, almost five years before Bowers was decided the European Court of Human Rights considered a case with parallels to Bowers and to today's case. An adult male resident in Northern Ireland alleged he was a practicing homosexual who desired to engage in consensual homosexual conduct. The laws of Northern Ireland forbade him that right. He alleged that he had been questioned, his home had been searched, and he feared criminal prosecution. The court held that the laws proscribing the conduct were invalid under the European Convention on Human Rights. Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, 45 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1981) ¶ ;52. Authoritative in all countries that are members of the Council of Europe (21 nations then, 45 nations now), the decision is at odds with the premise in Bowers that the claim put forward was insubstantial in our Western civilization.

In our own constitutional system the deficiencies in Bowers became even more apparent in the years following its announcement. The 25 States with laws prohibiting the relevant conduct referenced in the Bowers decision are reduced now to 13, of which 4 enforce their laws only against homosexual conduct. In those States where sodomy is still proscribed, whether for same-sex or heterosexual conduct, there is a pattern of nonenforcement with respect to consenting adults acting in private. The State of Texas admitted in 1994 that as of that date it had not prosecuted anyone under those circumstances. State v. Morales, 869 S. W. 2d 941, 943.

Two principal cases decided after Bowers cast its holding into even more doubt. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), the Court reaffirmed the substantive force of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause. The Casey decision again confirmed that our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Id., at 851. In explaining the respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices, we stated as follows: "These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State." Ibid. Persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do. The decision in Bowers would deny them this right.

The second post-Bowers case of principal relevance is Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620 (1996). There the Court struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Romer invalidated an amendment to Colorado's constitution which named as a solitary class persons who were homosexuals, lesbians, or bisexual either by "orientation, conduct, practices or relationships," id., at 624 (internal quotation marks omitted), and deprived them of protection under state antidiscrimination laws. We concluded that the provision was "born of animosity toward the class of persons affected" and further that it had no rational relation to a legitimate governmental purpose. Id., at 634.

As an alternative argument in this case, counsel for the petitioners and some amici contend that Romer provides the basis for declaring the Texas statute invalid under the Equal Protection Clause. That is a tenable argument, but we conclude the instant case requires us to address whether Bowers itself has continuing validity. Were we to hold the statute invalid under the Equal Protection Clause some might question whether a prohibition would be valid if drawn differently, say, to prohibit the conduct both between same-sex and different-sex participants.

Equality of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected by the substantive guarantee of liberty are linked in important respects, and a decision on the latter point advances both interests. If protected conduct is made criminal and the law which does so remains unexamined for its substantive validity, its stigma might remain even if it were not enforceable as drawn for equal protection reasons. When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres. The central holding of Bowers has been brought in question by this case, and it should be addressed. Its continuance as precedent demeans the lives of homosexual persons.

The stigma this criminal statute imposes, moreover, is not trivial. The offense, to be sure, is but a class C misdemeanor, a minor offense in the Texas legal system. Still, it remains a criminal offense with all that imports for the dignity of the persons charged. The petitioners will bear on their record the history of their criminal convictions. Just this Term we rejected various challenges to state laws requiring the registration of sex offenders. Smith v. Doe, 538 U. S. __ (2003); Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U. S. 1 (2003). We are advised that if Texas convicted an adult for private, consensual homosexual conduct under the statute here in question the convicted person would come within the registration laws of a least four States were he or she to be subject to their jurisdiction. Pet. for Cert. 13, and n. 12 (citing Idaho Code §§18-8301 to 18-8326 (Cum. Supp. 2002); La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., §§15:540-15:549 (West 2003); Miss. Code Ann. §§45-33-21 to 45-33-57 (Lexis 2003); S. C. Code Ann. §§23-3-400 to 23-3-490 (West 2002)). This underscores the consequential nature of the punishment and the state-sponsored condemnation attendant to the criminal prohibition. Furthermore, the Texas criminal conviction carries with it the other collateral consequences always following a conviction, such as notations on job application forms, to mention but one example.

The foundations of Bowers have sustained serious erosion from our recent decisions in Casey and Romer. When our precedent has been thus weakened, criticism from other sources is of greater significance. In the United States criticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing, disapproving of its reasoning in all respects, not just as to its historical assumptions. See, e.g., C. Fried, Order and Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution—A Firsthand Account 81-84 (1991); R. Posner, Sex and Reason 341-350 (1992). The courts of five different States have declined to follow it in interpreting provisions in their own state constitutions parallel to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Jegley v. Picado, 349 Ark. 600, 80 S. W. 3d 332 (2002); Powell v. State, 270 Ga. 327, 510 S. E. 2d 18, 24 (1998); Gryczan v. State, 283 Mont. 433, 942 P. 2d 112 (1997); Campbell v. Sundquist, 926 S. W. 2d 250 (Tenn. App. 1996); Commonwealth v. Wasson, 842 S. W. 2d 487 (Ky. 1992).

To the extent Bowers relied on values we share with a wider civilization, it should be noted that the reasoning and holding in Bowers have been rejected elsewhere. The European Court of Human Rights has followed not Bowers but its own decision in Dudgeon v. United Kingdom. See P. G. & J. H. v. United Kingdom, App. No. 00044787/98, ¶ ;56 (Eur. Ct. H. R., Sept. 25, 2001); Modinos v. Cyprus, 259 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1993); Norris v. Ireland, 142 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1988). Other nations, too, have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. See Brief for Mary Robinson et al. as Amici Curiae 11-12. The right the petitioners seek in this case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent.

The doctrine of stare decisis is essential to the respect accorded to the judgments of the Court and to the stability of the law. It is not, however, an inexorable command. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828 (1991) ("Stare decisis is not an inexorable command; rather, it 'is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision'") (quoting Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U. S. 106, 119 (1940))). In Casey we noted that when a Court is asked to overrule a precedent recognizing a constitutional liberty interest, individual or societal reliance on the existence of that liberty cautions with particular strength against reversing course. 505 U. S., at 855-856; see also id., at 844 ("Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt"). The holding in Bowers however, has not induced detrimental reliance comparable to some instances where recognized individual rights are involved. Indeed, there has been no individual or societal reliance on Bowers of the sort that could counsel against overturning its holding once there are compelling reasons to do so.Bowers itself causes uncertainty, for the precedents before and after its issuance contradict its central holding.

The rationale of Bowers does not withstand careful analysis. In his dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice Stevens came to these conclusions: "Our prior cases make two propositions abundantly clear. First, the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice; neither history nor tradition could save a law prohibiting miscegenation from constitutional attack. Second, individual decisions by married persons, concerning the intimacies of their physical relationship, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, this protection extends to intimate choices by unmarried as well as married persons." 478 U. S., at 216 (footnotes and citations omitted). Justice Stevens' analysis, in our view, should have been controlling in Bowers and should control here.

Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.

The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter." Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.

Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice O'Connor, concurring in the judgment.

The Court today overrules Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986). I joined Bowers, and do not join the Court in overruling it. Nevertheless, I agree with the Court that Texas' statute banning same-sex sodomy is unconstitutional. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §21.06 (2003). Rather than relying on the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, as the Court does, I base my conclusion on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike." Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 439 (1985); see also Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 216 (1982). Under our rational basis standard of review, "legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest." Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, supra, at 440; see also Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 534 (1973); Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 632-633 (1996); Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U. S. 1, 11-12 (1992).

Laws such as economic or tax legislation that are scrutinized under rational basis review normally pass constitutional muster, since "the Constitution presumes that even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic processes." Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, supra, at 440; see also Fitzgerald v. Racing Assn. of Central Iowa, ante, p. ___; Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U. S. 483 (1955). We have consistently held, however, that some objectives, such as "a bare ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group," are not legitimate state interests. Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, supra, at 534. See also Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, supra, at 446-447; Romer v. Evans, supra, at 632. When a law exhibits such a desire to harm a politically unpopular group, we have applied a more searching form of rational basis review to strike down such laws under the Equal Protection Clause.

We have been most likely to apply rational basis review to hold a law unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause where, as here, the challenged legislation inhibits personal relationships. In Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, for example, we held that a law preventing those households containing an individual unrelated to any other member of the household from receiving food stamps violated equal protection because the purpose of the law was to "'discriminate against hippies.'"413 U. S., at 534. The asserted governmental interest in preventing food stamp fraud was not deemed sufficient to satisfy rational basis review. Id., at 535-538. In Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, 447-455 (1972), we refused to sanction a law that discriminated between married and unmarried persons by prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to single persons. Likewise, in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, supra, we held that it was irrational for a State to require a home for the mentally disabled to obtain a special use permit when other residences—like fraternity houses and apartment buildings—did not have to obtain such a permit. And in Romer v. Evans, we disallowed a state statute that "impos[ed] a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group"—specifically, homosexuals. 517 U. S., at 632. The dissent apparently agrees that if these cases have stare decisis effect, Texas' sodomy law would not pass scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, regardless of the type of rational basis review that we apply. See post, at 17-18 (opinion of Scalia, J.).

The statute at issue here makes sodomy a crime only if a person "engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." Tex. Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) (2003). Sodomy between opposite-sex partners, however, is not a crime in Texas. That is, Texas treats the same conduct differently based solely on the participants. Those harmed by this law are people who have a same-sex sexual orientation and thus are more likely to engage in behavior prohibited by §21.06.

The Texas statute makes homosexuals unequal in the eyes of the law by making particular conduct—and only that conduct—subject to criminal sanction. It appears that prosecutions under Texas' sodomy law are rare. See State v. Morales, 869 S. W. 2d 941, 943 (Tex. 1994) (noting in 1994 that §21.06 "has not been, and in all probability will not be, enforced against private consensual conduct between adults"). This case shows, however, that prosecutions under §21.06 do occur. And while the penalty imposed on petitioners in this case was relatively minor, the consequences of conviction are not. As the Court notes, see ante, at 15, petitioners' convictions, if upheld, would disqualify them from or restrict their ability to engage in a variety of professions, including medicine, athletic training, and interior design. See, e.g., Tex. Occ. Code Ann. §164.051(a)(2)(B) (2003 Pamphlet) (physician); §451.251 (a)(1) (athletic trainer); §1053.252(2) (interior designer). Indeed, were petitioners to move to one of four States, their convictions would require them to register as sex offenders to local law enforcement. See, e.g., Idaho Code §18-8304 (Cum. Supp. 2002); La. Stat. Ann. §15:542 (West Cum. Supp. 2003); Miss. Code Ann. §45-33-25 (West 2003); S. C. Code Ann. §23-3-430 (West Cum. Supp. 2002); cf. ante, at 15.

And the effect of Texas' sodomy law is not just limited to the threat of prosecution or consequence of conviction. Texas' sodomy law brands all homosexuals as criminals, thereby making it more difficult for homosexuals to be treated in the same manner as everyone else. Indeed, Texas itself has previously acknowledged the collateral effects of the law, stipulating in a prior challenge to this action that the law "legally sanctions discrimination against [homosexuals] in a variety of ways unrelated to the criminal law," including in the areas of "employment, family issues, and housing." State v. Morales, 826 S. W. 2d 201, 203 (Tex. App. 1992).

Texas attempts to justify its law, and the effects of the law, by arguing that the statute satisfies rational basis review because it furthers the legitimate governmental interest of the promotion of morality. InBowers, we held that a state law criminalizing sodomy as applied to homosexual couples did not violate substantive due process. We rejected the argument that no rational basis existed to justify the law, pointing to the government's interest in promoting morality. 478 U. S., at 196. The only question in front of the Court in Bowers was whether the substantive component of the Due Process Clause protected a right to engage in homosexual sodomy. Id., at 188, n. 2.Bowers did not hold that moral disapproval of a group is a rational basis under the Equal Protection Clause to criminalize homosexual sodomy when heterosexual sodomy is not punished.

This case raises a different issue than Bowers: whether, under the Equal Protection Clause, moral disapproval is a legitimate state interest to justify by itself a statute that bans homosexual sodomy, but not heterosexual sodomy. It is not. Moral disapproval of this group, like a bare desire to harm the group, is an interest that is insufficient to satisfy rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause. See, e.g., Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, supra, at 534; Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S., at 634-635. Indeed, we have never held that moral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest, is a sufficient rationale under the Equal Protection Clause to justify a law that discriminates among groups of persons.

Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate governmental interest under the Equal Protection Clause because legal classifications must not be "drawn for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law." Id., at 633. Texas' invocation of moral disapproval as a legitimate state interest proves nothing more than Texas' desire to criminalize homosexual sodomy. But the Equal Protection Clause prevents a State from creating "a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake." Id., at 635. And because Texas so rarely enforces its sodomy law as applied to private, consensual acts, the law serves more as a statement of dislike and disapproval against homosexuals than as a tool to stop criminal behavior. The Texas sodomy law "raise[s] the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected." Id., at 634.

Texas argues, however, that the sodomy law does not discriminate against homosexual persons. Instead, the State maintains that the law discriminates only against homosexual conduct. While it is true that the law applies only to conduct, the conduct targeted by this law is conduct that is closely correlated with being homosexual. Under such circumstances, Texas' sodomy law is targeted at more than conduct. It is instead directed toward gay persons as a class. "After all, there can hardly be more palpable discrimination against a class than making the conduct that defines the class criminal." Id., at 641 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted). When a State makes homosexual conduct criminal, and not "deviate sexual intercourse" committed by persons of different sexes, "that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres." Ante, at 14.

Indeed, Texas law confirms that the sodomy statute is directed toward homosexuals as a class. In Texas, calling a person a homosexual is slander per se because the word "homosexual" "impute[s] the commission of a crime." Plumley v. Landmark Chevrolet, Inc., 122 F. 3d 308, 310 (CA5 1997) (applying Texas law); see also Head v. Newton, 596 S. W. 2d 209, 210 (Tex. App. 1980). The State has admitted that because of the sodomy law, being homosexual carries the presumption of being a criminal. See State v. Morales, 826 S. W. 2d, at 202-203 ("[T]he statute brands lesbians and gay men as criminals and thereby legally sanctions discrimination against them in a variety of ways unrelated to the criminal law"). Texas' sodomy law therefore results in discrimination against homosexuals as a class in an array of areas outside the criminal law. See ibid. In Romer v. Evans, we refused to sanction a law that singled out homosexuals "for disfavored legal status." 517 U. S., at 633. The same is true here. The Equal Protection Clause "'neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.'" Id., at 623 (quoting Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J. dissenting)).

A State can of course assign certain consequences to a violation of its criminal law. But the State cannot single out one identifiable class of citizens for punishment that does not apply to everyone else, with moral disapproval as the only asserted state interest for the law. The Texas sodomy statute subjects homosexuals to "a lifelong penalty and stigma. A legislative classification that threatens the creation of an underclass ... cannot be reconciled with" the Equal Protection Clause. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S., at 239 (Powell, J., concurring).

Whether a sodomy law that is neutral both in effect and application, see Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886), would violate the substantive component of the Due Process Clause is an issue that need not be decided today. I am confident, however, that so long as the Equal Protection Clause requires a sodomy law to apply equally to the private consensual conduct of homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, such a law would not long stand in our democratic society. In the words of Justice Jackson: "The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected." Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106, 112-113 (1949) (concurring opinion).

That this law as applied to private, consensual conduct is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause does not mean that other laws distinguishing between heterosexuals and homosexuals would similarly fail under rational basis review. Texas cannot assert any legitimate state interest here, such as national security or preserving the traditional institution of marriage. Unlike the moral disapproval of same-sex relations—the asserted state interest in this case—other reasons exist to promote the institution of marriage beyond mere moral disapproval of an excluded group.

A law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the State's moral disapproval of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review. I therefore concur in the Court's judgment that Texas' sodomy law banning "deviate sexual intercourse" between consenting adults of the same sex, but not between consenting adults of different sexes, is unconstitutional.

Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.

"Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt." Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 844 (1992). That was the Court's sententious response, barely more than a decade ago, to those seeking to overrule Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973). The Court's response today, to those who have engaged in a 17-year crusade to overrule Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986), is very different. The need for stability and certainty presents no barrier.

Most of the rest of today's opinion has no relevance to its actual holding—that the Texas statute "furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify" its application to petitioners under rational-basis review. Ante, at 18 (overruling Bowers to the extent it sustained Georgia's anti-sodomy statute under the rational-basis test). Though there is discussion of "fundamental proposition[s]," ante, at 4, and "fundamental decisions," ibid. nowhere does the Court's opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a "fundamental right" under the Due Process Clause; nor does it subject the Texas law to the standard of review that would be appropriate (strict scrutiny) if homosexual sodomy were a "fundamental right." Thus, while overruling the outcome of Bowers, the Court leaves strangely untouched its central legal conclusion: "[R]espondent would have us announce ... a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do." 478 U. S., at 191. Instead the Court simply describes petitioners' conduct as "an exercise of their liberty"—which it undoubtedly is—and proceeds to apply an unheard-of form of rational-basis review that will have far-reaching implications beyond this case. Ante, at 3.

I

I begin with the Court's surprising readiness to reconsider a decision rendered a mere 17 years ago in Bowers v. Hardwick. I do not myself believe in rigid adherence to stare decisis in constitutional cases; but I do believe that we should be consistent rather than manipulative in invoking the doctrine. Today's opinions in support of reversal do not bother to distinguish—or indeed, even bother to mention—the paean to stare decisis coauthored by three Members of today's majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There, when stare decisis meant preservation of judicially invented abortion rights, the widespread criticism of was strong reason to reaffirm it: "Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe[,] ... its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry... . [T]o overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason ... would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question." 505 U. S., at 866-867.b Today, however, the widespread opposition to Bowers, a decision resolving an issue as "intensely divisive" as the issue in Roe, is offered as a reason in favor of overruling it. See ante, at 15-16. Gone, too, is any "enquiry" (of the sort conducted in Casey) into whether the decision sought to be overruled has "proven 'unworkable,'"Casey, supra, at 855.

Today's approach to stare decisis invites us to overrule an erroneously decided precedent (including an "intensely divisive" decision) if: (1) its foundations have been "eroded" by subsequent decisions, ante, at 15; (2) it has been subject to "substantial and continuing" criticism, ibid.; and (3) it has not induced "individual or societal reliance" that counsels against overturning, ante, at 16. The problem is that Roe itself—which today's majority surely has no disposition to overrule—satisfies these conditions to at least the same degree asBowers.

(1) A preliminary digressive observation with regard to the first factor: The Court's claim that Planned Parenthood v. Casey, supra, "casts some doubt" upon the holding in Bowers (or any other case, for that matter) does not withstand analysis. Ante, at 10. As far as its holding is concerned, Casey provided a less expansive right to abortion than did Roe, which was already on the books whenBowers was decided. And if the Court is referring not to the holding of Casey, but to the dictum of its famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage, ante, at 13 ("'At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life'"): That "casts some doubt" upon either the totality of our jurisprudence or else (presumably the right answer) nothing at all. I have never heard of a law that attempted to restrict one's "right to define" certain concepts; and if the passage calls into question the government's power to regulate actions based on one's self-defined "concept of existence, etc.," it is the passage that ate the rule of law.

I do not quarrel with the Court's claim that Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620 (1996), "eroded" the "foundations" of Bowers' rational-basis holding. See Romer, supra, at 640-643 (Scalia, J., dissenting).) But Roe and Casey have been equally "eroded" by Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 721 (1997), which held that only fundamental rights which are "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition'" qualify for anything other than rational basis scrutiny under the doctrine of "substantive due process." Roe and Casey, of course, subjected the restriction of abortion to heightened scrutiny without even attempting to establish that the freedom to abort was rooted in this Nation's tradition.

(2) Bowers, the Court says, has been subject to "substantial and continuing [criticism], disapproving of its reasoning in all respects, not just as to its historical assumptions." Ante, at 15. Exactly what those nonhistorical criticisms are, and whether the Court even agrees with them, are left unsaid, although the Court does cite two books. See ibid. (citing C. Fried, Order and Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution—A Firsthand Account 81-84 (1991); R. Posner, Sex and Reason 341-350 (1992)). Of course, Roe too (and by extension Casey) had been (and still is) subject to unrelenting criticism, including criticism from the two commentators cited by the Court today. See Fried, supra, at 75 ("Roe was a prime example of twisted judging"); Posner, supra, at 337 ("[The Court's] opinion in Roe ... fails to measure up to professional expectations regarding judicial opinions"); Posner, Judicial Opinion Writing, 62 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1421, 1434 (1995) (describing the opinion in Roe as an "embarrassing performanc[e]").

(3) That leaves, to distinguish the rock-solid, unamendable disposition of Roe from the readily overrulable Bowers, only the third factor. "[T]here has been," the Court says, "no individual or societal reliance on Bowers of the sort that could counsel against overturning its holding ... ." Ante, at 16. It seems to me that the "societal reliance" on the principles confirmed in Bowers and discarded today has been overwhelming. Countless judicial decisions and legislative enactments have relied on the ancient proposition that a governing majority's belief that certain sexual behavior is "immoral and unacceptable" constitutes a rational basis for regulation. See, e.g., Williams v. Pryor, 240 F. 3d 944, 949 (CA11 2001) (citing Bowers in upholding Alabama's prohibition on the sale of sex toys on the ground that "[t]he crafting and safeguarding of public morality ... indisputably is a legitimate government interest under rational basis scrutiny"); Milner v. Apfel, 148 F. 3d 812, 814 (CA7 1998) (citing Bowers for the proposition that "[l]egislatures are permitted to legislate with regard to morality ... rather than confined to preventing demonstrable harms"); Holmes v. California Army National Guard 124 F. 3d 1126, 1136 (CA9 1997) (relying onBowers in upholding the federal statute and regulations banning from military service those who engage in homosexual conduct); Owens v. State, 352 Md. 663, 683, 724 A. 2d 43, 53 (1999) (relying on Bowers in holding that "a person has no constitutional right to engage in sexual intercourse, at least outside of marriage"); Sherman v. Henry, 928 S. W. 2d 464, 469-473 (Tex. 1996) (relying on Bowers in rejecting a claimed constitutional right to commit adultery). We ourselves relied extensively on Bowers when we concluded, in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. 560, 569 (1991), that Indiana's public indecency statute furthered "a substantial government interest in protecting order and morality," ibid., (plurality opinion); see also id., at 575 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today's decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding. See ante, at 11 (noting "an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex" (emphasis added)). The impossibility of distinguishing homosexuality from other traditional "morals" offenses is precisely why Bowers rejected the rational-basis challenge. "The law," it said, "is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed." 478 U. S., at 196.

What a massive disruption of the current social order, therefore, the overruling of Bowers entails. Not so the overruling of Roe, which would simply have restored the regime that existed for centuries before 1973, in which the permissibility of and restrictions upon abortion were determined legislatively State-by-State. Casey, however, chose to base its stare decisis determination on a different "sort" of reliance. "[P]eople," it said, "have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail." 505 U. S., at 856. This falsely assumes that the consequence of overruling Roe would have been to make abortion unlawful. It would not; it would merely have permitted the States to do so. Many States would unquestionably have declined to prohibit abortion, and others would not have prohibited it within six months (after which the most significant reliance interests would have expired). Even for persons in States other than these, the choice would not have been between abortion and childbirth, but between abortion nearby and abortion in a neighboring State.

To tell the truth, it does not surprise me, and should surprise no one, that the Court has chosen today to revise the standards of stare decisis set forth in Casey. It has thereby exposed Casey's extraordinary deference to precedent for the result-oriented expedient that it is.

II

Having decided that it need not adhere to stare decisis, the Court still must establish that Bowers was wrongly decided and that the Texas statute, as applied to petitioners, is unconstitutional.

Texas Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) (2003) undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. But there is no right to "liberty" under the Due Process Clause, though today's opinion repeatedly makes that claim. Ante, at 6 ("The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice"); ante, at 13 ("'These matters ... are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment'"); ante, at 17 ("Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government"). The Fourteenth Amendment expressly allows States to deprive their citizens of "liberty," so long as "due process of law" is provided:"No state shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Amdt. 14 (emphasis added).

Our opinions applying the doctrine known as "substantive due process" hold that the Due Process Clause prohibits States from infringing fundamental liberty interests, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 721. We have held repeatedly, in cases the Court today does not overrule, that only fundamental rights qualify for this so-called "heightened scrutiny" protection—that is, rights which are "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,'" ibid. See Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 303 (1993) (fundamental liberty interests must be "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental" (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)); United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739, 751 (1987) (same). See also Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U. S. 110, 122 (1989) ("[W]e have insisted not merely that the interest denominated as a 'liberty' be 'fundamental' ... but also that it be an interest traditionally protected by our society"); Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923) (Fourteenth Amendment protects "those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men" (emphasis added)). All other liberty interests may be abridged or abrogated pursuant to a validly enacted state law if that law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

Bowers held, first, that criminal prohibitions of homosexual sodomy are not subject to heightened scrutiny because they do not implicate a "fundamental right" under the Due Process Clause, 478 U. S., at 191-194. Noting that "[p]roscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots," id., at 192, that "[s]odomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights," ibid., and that many States had retained their bans on sodomy, id., at 193, Bowers concluded that a right to engage in homosexual sodomy was not "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,'" id., at 192.

The Court today does not overrule this holding. Not once does it describe homosexual sodomy as a "fundamental right" or a "fundamental liberty interest," nor does it subject the Texas statute to strict scrutiny. Instead, having failed to establish that the right to homosexual sodomy is "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,'" the Court concludes that the application of Texas's statute to petitioners' conduct fails the rational-basis test, and overrules Bowers' holding to the contrary, see id., at 196. "The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual." Ante, at 18.

I shall address that rational-basis holding presently. First, however, I address some aspersions that the Court casts upon Bowers' conclusion that homosexual sodomy is not a "fundamental right"—even though, as I have said, the Court does not have the boldness to reverse that conclusion.

III

The Court's description of "the state of the law" at the time of Bowers only confirms that Bowers was right. Ante, at 5. The Court points to Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 481-482 (1965). But that case expressly disclaimed any reliance on the doctrine of "substantive due process," and grounded the so-called "right to privacy" in penumbras of constitutional provisions other than the Due Process Clause. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972), likewise had nothing to do with "substantive due process"; it invalidated a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons solely on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause. Of course Eisenstadt contains well known dictum relating to the "right to privacy," but this referred to the right recognized in Griswold—a right penumbral to the specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights, and not a "substantive due process" right.

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to abort an unborn child was a "fundamental right" protected by the Due Process Clause. 410 U. S., at 155. The Roe Court, however, made no attempt to establish that this right was "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition'"; instead, it based its conclusion that "the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty ... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" on its own normative judgment that anti-abortion laws were undesirable. See id., at 153. We have since rejected Roe's holding that regulations of abortion must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, see Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U. S., at 876 (joint opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ.); id., at 951-953 (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part)—and thus, by logical implication, Roe's holding that the right to abort an unborn child is a "fundamental right." See 505 U. S., at 843-912 (joint opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ.) (not once describing abortion as a "fundamental right" or a "fundamental liberty interest").

After discussing the history of antisodomy laws, ante, at 7-10, the Court proclaims that, "it should be noted that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter," ante, at 7. This observation in no way casts into doubt the "definitive [historical] conclusion," id., on which Bowers relied: that our Nation has a longstanding history of laws prohibiting sodomy in general—regardless of whether it was performed by same-sex or opposite-sex couples: "It is obvious to us that neither of these formulations would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy. Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots. Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' is, at best, facetious." 478 U. S., at 192-194 (citations and footnotes omitted; emphasis added). It is (as Bowers recognized) entirely irrelevant whether the laws in our long national tradition criminalizing homosexual sodomy were "directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter." Ante, at 7. Whether homosexual sodomy was prohibited by a law targeted at same-sex sexual relations or by a more general law prohibiting both homosexual and heterosexual sodomy, the only relevant point is that it was criminalized—which suffices to establish that homosexual sodomy is not a right "deeply rooted in our Nation's history and tradition." The Court today agrees that homosexual sodomy was criminalized and thus does not dispute the facts on which Bowers actually relied.

Next the Court makes the claim, again unsupported by any citations, that "[l]aws prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private." Ante, at 8. The key qualifier here is "acting in private"—since the Court admits that sodomy laws were enforced against consenting adults (although the Court contends that prosecutions were "infrequent," ante, at 9). I do not know what "acting in private" means; surely consensual sodomy, like heterosexual intercourse, is rarely performed on stage. If all the Court means by "acting in private" is "on private premises, with the doors closed and windows covered," it is entirely unsurprising that evidence of enforcement would be hard to come by. (Imagine the circumstances that would enable a search warrant to be obtained for a residence on the ground that there was probable cause to believe that consensual sodomy was then and there occurring.) Surely that lack of evidence would not sustain the proposition that consensual sodomy on private premises with the doors closed and windows covered was regarded as a "fundamental right," even though all other consensual sodomy was criminalized. There are 203 prosecutions for consensual, adult homosexual sodomy reported in the West Reporting system and official state reporters from the years 1880-1995. See W. Eskridge, Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet 375 (1999) (hereinafter Gaylaw). There are also records of 20 sodomy prosecutions and 4 executions during the colonial period. J. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac 29, 58, 663 (1983). Bowers' conclusion that homosexual sodomy is not a fundamental right "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" is utterly unassailable.

Realizing that fact, the Court instead says: "[W]e think that our laws and traditions in the past half century are of most relevance here. These references show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex." Ante, at 11 (emphasis added). Apart from the fact that such an "emerging awareness" does not establish a "fundamental right," the statement is factually false. States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults "in matters pertaining to sex": prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography. Sodomy laws, too, have been enforced "in the past half century," in which there have been 134 reported cases involving prosecutions for consensual, adult, homosexual sodomy. Gaylaw 375. In relying, for evidence of an "emerging recognition," upon the American Law Institute's 1955 recommendation not to criminalize "'consensual sexual relations conducted in private,'" ante, at 11, the Court ignores the fact that this recommendation was "a point of resistance in most of the states that considered adopting the Model Penal Code." Gaylaw 159.

In any event, an "emerging awareness" is by definition not "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition[s]," as we have said "fundamental right" status requires. Constitutional entitlements do not spring into existence because some States choose to lessen or eliminate criminal sanctions on certain behavior. Much less do they spring into existence, as the Court seems to believe, because foreign nations decriminalize conduct. The Bowers majority opinion never relied on "values we share with a wider civilization," ante, at 16, but rather rejected the claimed right to sodomy on the ground that such a right was not "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,'" 478 U. S., at 193-194 (emphasis added). Bowers' rational-basis holding is likewise devoid of any reliance on the views of a "wider civilization," see id., at 196. The Court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is therefore meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since "this Court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans." Foster v. Florida, 537 U. S. 990, n. (2002) (Thomas, J., concurring in denial of certiorari).

IV

I turn now to the ground on which the Court squarely rests its holding: the contention that there is no rational basis for the law here under attack. This proposition is so out of accord with our jurisprudence—indeed, with the jurisprudence of any society we know—that it requires little discussion.

The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are "immoral and unacceptable," Bowers, supra, at 196—the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, "furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," ante, at 18 (emphasis addded). The Court embraces instead Justice Stevens' declaration in his Bowers dissent, that "the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice," ante, at 17. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.

V

Finally, I turn to petitioners' equal-protection challenge, which no Member of the Court save Justice O'Connor, ante, at 1 (opinion concurring in judgment), embraces: On its face §21.06(a) applies equally to all persons. Men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are all subject to its prohibition of deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex. To be sure, §21.06 does distinguish between the sexes insofar as concerns the partner with whom the sexual acts are performed: men can violate the law only with other men, and women only with other women. But this cannot itself be a denial of equal protection, since it is precisely the same distinction regarding partner that is drawn in state laws prohibiting marriage with someone of the same sex while permitting marriage with someone of the opposite sex.

The objection is made, however, that the antimiscegenation laws invalidated in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 8 (1967), similarly were applicable to whites and blacks alike, and only distinguished between the races insofar as the partner was concerned. In Loving, however, we correctly applied heightened scrutiny, rather than the usual rational-basis review, because the Virginia statute was "designed to maintain White Supremacy." Id., at 6, 11. A racially discriminatory purpose is always sufficient to subject a law to strict scrutiny, even a facially neutral law that makes no mention of race. See Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 241-242 (1976). No purpose to discriminate against men or women as a class can be gleaned from the Texas law, so rational-basis review applies. That review is readily satisfied here by the same rational basis that satisfied it in Bowers—society's belief that certain forms of sexual behavior are "immoral and unacceptable," 478 U. S., at 196. This is the same justification that supports many other laws regulating sexual behavior that make a distinction based upon the identity of the partner—for example, laws against adultery, fornication, and adult incest, and laws refusing to recognize homosexual marriage.

Justice O'Connor argues that the discrimination in this law which must be justified is not its discrimination with regard to the sex of the partner but its discrimination with regard to the sexual proclivity of the principal actor. "While it is true that the law applies only to conduct, the conduct targeted by this law is conduct that is closely correlated with being homosexual. Under such circumstances, Texas' sodomy law is targeted at more than conduct. It is instead directed toward gay persons as a class." Ante, at 5. Of course the same could be said of any law. A law against public nudity targets "the conduct that is closely correlated with being a nudist," and hence "is targeted at more than conduct"; it is "directed toward nudists as a class." But be that as it may. Even if the Texas law does deny equal protection to "homosexuals as a class," that denial still does not need to be justified by anything more than a rational basis, which our cases show is satisfied by the enforcement of traditional notions of sexual morality.

Justice O'Connor simply decrees application of "a more searching form of rational basis review" to the Texas statute. Ante, at 2. The cases she cites do not recognize such a standard, and reach their conclusions only after finding, as required by conventional rational-basis analysis, that no conceivable legitimate state interest supports the classification at issue. See Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S., at 635; Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 448-450 (1985); Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 534-538 (1973). Nor does Justice O'Connor explain precisely what her "more searching form" of rational-basis review consists of. It must at least mean, however, that laws exhibiting "'a ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group,'" ante, at 2, are invalid even though there may be a conceivable rational basis to support them.

This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Justice O'Connor seeks to preserve them by the conclusory statement that "preserving the traditional institution of marriage" is a legitimate state interest. Ante, at 7. But "preserving the traditional institution of marriage" is just a kinder way of describing the State's moral disapproval of same-sex couples. Texas's interest in §21.06 could be recast in similarly euphemistic terms: "preserving the traditional sexual mores of our society." In the jurisprudence Justice O'Connor has seemingly created, judges can validate laws by characterizing them as "preserving the traditions of society" (good); or invalidate them by characterizing them as "expressing moral disapproval" (bad).

* * *

Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. I noted in an earlier opinion the fact that the American Association of Law Schools (to which any reputable law school must seek to belong) excludes from membership any school that refuses to ban from its job-interview facilities a law firm (no matter how small) that does not wish to hire as a prospective partner a person who openly engages in homosexual conduct. See Romer, supra, at 653.

One of the most revealing statements in today's opinion is the Court's grim warning that the criminalization of homosexual conduct is "an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres." Ante, at 14. It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed. Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The Court views it as "discrimination" which it is the function of our judgments to deter. So imbued is the Court with the law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously "mainstream"; that in most States what the Court calls "discrimination" against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal; that proposals to ban such "discrimination" under Title VII have repeatedly been rejected by Congress, see Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1994, S. 2238, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. (1994); Civil Rights Amendments, H. R. 5452, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975); that in some cases such "discrimination" is mandated by federal statute, see 10 U. S. C. §654(b)(1) (mandating discharge from the armed forces of any service member who engages in or intends to engage in homosexual acts); and that in some cases such "discrimination" is a constitutional right, see Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640 (2000).

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual acts. But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts—or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them—than I would forbid it to do so. What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new "constitutional right" by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that "later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," ante, at 18; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.

One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion. The people may feel that their disapprobation of homosexual conduct is strong enough to disallow homosexual marriage, but not strong enough to criminalize private homosexual acts—and may legislate accordingly. The Court today pretends that it possesses a similar freedom of action, so that that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada (in a decision that the Canadian Government has chosen not to appeal). See Halpern v. Toronto, 2003 WL 34950 (Ontario Ct. App.); Cohen, Dozens in Canada Follow Gay Couple's Lead, Washington Post, June 12, 2003, p. A25. At the end of its opinion—after having laid waste the foundations of our rational-basis jurisprudence—the Court says that the present case "does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter." Ante, at 17. Do not believe it. More illuminating than this bald, unreasoned disclaimer is the progression of thought displayed by an earlier passage in the Court's opinion, which notes the constitutional protections afforded to "personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education," and then declares that "[p]ersons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do." Ante, at 13 (emphasis added). Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, ante, at 18; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," ante, at 6; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution," ibid.? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court. Many will hope that, as the Court comfortingly assures us, this is so.

The matters appropriate for this Court's resolution are only three: Texas's prohibition of sodomy neither infringes a "fundamental right" (which the Court does not dispute), nor is unsupported by a rational relation to what the Constitution considers a legitimate state interest, nor denies the equal protection of the laws. I dissent.

Justice Thomas, dissenting.

I join Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion. I write separately to note that the law before the Court today "is ... uncommonly silly." Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 527 (1965) (Stewart, J., dissenting). If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

Notwithstanding this, I recognize that as a member of this Court I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to "decide cases 'agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.'" Id., at 530. And, just like Justice Stewart, I "can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy," ibid., or as the Court terms it today, the "liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions," ante, at 1.

Lawrence v. Texas
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 26, 2003 Decided June 26, 2003
Full case name	John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner v. Texas
Docket nos.	02-102
Citations	539 U.S. 558 (more) 123 S. Ct. 2472; 156 L. Ed. 2d 508; 2003 U.S. LEXIS 5013; 71 U.S.L.W. 4574; 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Service 5559; 2003 Daily Journal DAR 7036; 16 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 427
Prior history	Defendants convicted, Harris County Criminal Court (1999), rev'd, 2000 WL 729417 (Tex. App. 2000) (depublished), aff'd en banc, 41 S.W.3d 349 (Tex. App. 2001), review denied (Tex. App. 2002), cert. granted, 537 U.S. 1044 (2002)
Subsequent history	Complaint dismissed, 2003 WL 22453791, 2003 Tex. App. LEXIS 9191 (Tex. App. 2003)
Argument	Oral argument
Holding
A Texas law classifying consensual, adult homosexual intercourse as illegal sodomy violated the privacy and liberty of adults to engage in private intimate conduct under the 14th amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence	O'Connor
Dissent	Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, Thomas
Dissent	Thomas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Tex. Penal Code § 21.06(a) (2003)

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003),^[1] was a landmark United States Supreme Court case. In the 6-3 ruling, the justices struck down the sodomy law in Texas. The court had previously addressed the same issue in 1986 in Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute, not finding a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The majority held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence has the effect of invalidating similar laws throughout the United States that purport to criminalize sodomy between consenting same-sex adults acting in private. It also invalidated the application of sodomy laws to heterosexual sex.

The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amici curiae ("friends of the court") briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Prior case law 1.2 Arrest of Lawrence and Garner 2 Considerations 3 Decision 4 O'Connor's concurrence 5 Dissents 6 Broader implications 7 Impact on subsequent cases 8 Ongoing Debate Over the Level of Scrutiny Applied in Lawrence 8.1 Narrower Interpretation 8.2 Broader Interpretation 9 See also 10 Footnotes 11 References 12 Further reading 13 External links

History

Prior case law

Under the common law, the existence of rights of sexual partners were recognized through the marriage contract. That is, in common law there was no stand-alone right to engage in sexual activity, be they male or female, adult or minor. But, it is a basic legal principle under the common and statutory laws that everything that is not forbidden by the common and statutory law is allowed. As sexual acts usually take place in private, few cases involving engagement in sodomy and fornication came before the courts, and no precedent was established under the common law forbidding fornication; with sodomy, the common law was mixed.

The common law came from Great Britain with the British colonists, and upon the American Revolution, became the law of the United States, except where contradicted by statute, or, above all, the Constitution. Because fornication and sodomy were viewed as evil, several US jurisdictions passed statutes forbidding them.

The precise legal definition of state law prohibiting sodomy (or "crimes against nature") was a frequent legal dispute in the United States as early as the early 1800s. Some state courts ruled that the law only applied to anal sex, while other State courts ruled that their sodomy prohibition also included oral sex.

Legal punishments often included heavy fines and or long prison sentences, with some states (Illinois being the first in 1827) specifically denying other rights, such as suffrage, to anyone convicted of the crime of sodomy. In the late nineteenth and early twenty centuries, several states imposed various eugenics laws against anyone deemed to be a "sexual pervert". As late as 1970, Connecticut denied at least one driver’s license to a man for being an "admitted homosexual".

An organized American gay rights movement emerged in the 1950s, and sought to change, among other things, the various criminal laws used against gay (and sometimes lesbian) Americans. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey was one of the early, well known, post-war proponent of reforming these criminal laws, yet few lawyers or judges expressed much public support.

In 1961 the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code expressly advocated repealing sodomy laws as they applied to private, adult and consensual behavior.^[2] Yet, it would be a few years later before the ACLU took its first major case in opposition to these laws.^[3] Most judges were largely unsympathetic to the substantive due process claims raised.

In 1964, Indiana Supreme Court Justice Amos Jackson became the first appointed State Judge to write a dissent criticizing sodomy laws, and he would continue to oppose the laws in his dissents until he retired in 1970.

By the 1960s, attitudes towards sexual relations, marriage, sexual orientation, and the role of women began to change. This was sped along with the advent of safe and effective birth control devices and medicines. Attitudes strongly discouraging premarital sex decreased in intensity. "No-fault" divorce laws made getting divorces easier, and the number of unmarried partners living together (a relationship formerly frowned upon) soared. As part of this change in societal norms, the acceptance of same-sex relationships and the number of people openly seeking such relationships increased, to the point that many states repealed their sodomy laws in the 1970s. Also at this time, Great Britain's 1957 Wolfenden Report recommended the repeal of British sodomy laws. Ten years later, Britain's Sexual Offences Act of 1967 did liberalize British sex crime laws, though it was not a total equalization between gay and straight couples.

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down a law barring the use of contraceptives by married couples. Griswold was the first Supreme Court case to recognize the right to privacy, which was based not on any specific guarantee in the Bill of Rights, but was part of "penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance", established through case law^[4]. Such penumbras include: the Fourth Amendment, which protects private homes from searches and seizures without a warrant based on probable cause; the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law; and the Ninth Amendment, which specifies that the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights cannot be construed as being an exhaustive list of rights. The Court limited its recognition of this right to married couples. Eisenstadt v. Baird, decided in 1972, potentially expanded the scope of sexual privacy rights by holding in dicta that if the "right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." This gave constitutional protection to unmarried persons using and purchasing birth control. In 1973, the choice whether or not to have an abortion was found to be protected by the Constitution in the extraordinarily controversial Roe v. Wade.

In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court heard a constitutional challenge to sodomy laws brought by a man who had been arrested, but was not prosecuted, for engaging in oral sex with another man in his home. The Court rejected this challenge by a 5 to 4 vote. Justice Byron White's majority opinion emphasized that Eisenstadt and Roe had only recognized a right to engage in procreative sexual activity, and that longstanding moral antipathy toward homosexual sodomy was enough to argue against the notion that the Framers of the Constitution would have envisioned a "right" to sodomy. If the court were to hold otherwise, Justice White argued, the Court would be substituting its own moral judgments for those of the people's elected representatives.

Justice Blackmun wrote a dissent in Bowers, in which he argued that the majority's conception of liberty was too narrow. He used the Court's recent precedents on freedom of intimate association, such as Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees (1984), to advocate for a more open-ended balancing test in such cases.

Justice Stevens also believed that the majority had defined the right at stake too narrowly. He filed a dissent, based not on the Court's intimate association cases, but on a thorough analysis of the Court's substantive Due Process liberty cases. Justice Stevens interpreted Eisenstad as fundamentally affecting the scope and nature of substantive Due Process liberty rights, based on the idea that the Constitution protects people as individuals, not as family units.^[5] He summarized the Court's then existing substantive Due Process liberty right as such: "[I]ndividual decisions by married persons, concerning the intimacies of their physical relationship, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, this protection extends to intimate choices by unmarried as well as married persons." He then reasoned that because state intrusions are equally burdensome on an individual's personal life regardless of his marital status or sexual orientation, then there is no reason to treat the rights of citizens in same-sex couples any differently.^[6] Thus, Justice Stevens would have applied the substantive Due Process liberty protection equally, "regardless of whether the parties who engage in it are married or unmarried, or are of the same or different sexes."^[7] In 2003, the Lawrence majority relied heavily on Justive Stevens' Bowers dissent, and ultimately decided that "Justice Stevens' analysis, in our view, should have been controlling in Bowers and should control here. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today."^[8]

The Kentucky Supreme Court declined to follow the Court's analysis in Kentucky v. Wasson (1992), striking down its state's sodomy law on the basis of its state constitution. In 1996's Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Colorado constitutional provision repealing local antidiscrimination ordinances involving sexual orientation.

Arrest of Lawrence and Garner

The petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, a medical technologist, then age 55, and Tyron Garner (1967–2006),^[9] then 31, were alleged to have been engaging in consensual anal sex in Lawrence's apartment in the outskirts of Houston between 10:30 and 11 p.m. on September 17, 1998 when Harris County sheriff's deputy Joseph Quinn entered the unlocked apartment, with his weapon drawn, arresting the two.

The arrests had stemmed from a false report of a "weapons disturbance" in their home — that because of a domestic disturbance or robbery, there was a man with a gun "going crazy." The person who filed the report, neighbor Robert Royce Eubanks, then 40,^[10] had earlier been accused of harassing the plaintiffs. Despite the false report, probable cause to enter the home was not at issue in the case. Eubanks, with whom Garner was romantically involved at the time of the arrest,^[11] later admitted that he was lying, pleaded no contest to charges of filing a false police report, and served 15 days in jail.

Lawrence and Garner were arrested, held overnight in jail, and charged with violating Texas's anti-sodomy statute, the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law. The law, Chapter 21, Sec. 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, designated it as a Class C misdemeanor when someone "engages in deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex," prohibiting anal and oral sex between members of the same sex.^[12] They later posted $200 bail.

On November 20, Lawrence and Garner pleaded no contest to the charges. They were convicted by Justice of the Peace Mike Parrott, but exercised their right to a new trial before a Texas Criminal Court, where they asked the court to dismiss the charges against them on Fourteenth Amendment equal protection grounds, claiming that the law was unconstitutional since it prohibits sodomy between same-sex couples, but not between heterosexual couples, and also on right to privacy grounds. After the Criminal Court rejected this request, they pleaded no contest, reserving their right to file an appeal, and were fined $200 each (out of a maximum fine of $500 each), plus $141.25 in court costs.

On November 4, 1999, arguments were presented to a three-judge panel of the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals on both equal protection and right to privacy grounds. John S. Anderson and chief justice Paul Murphy ruled in the appellants' favor, finding that the law violated the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution, which bars discrimination because of sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. J. Harvey Hudson dissented. This 2-1 decision ruled the Texas law was unconstitutional; the full court, however, voted to reconsider its decision, upholding the law's constitutionality 7-2 and denying both the substantive due process and the equal protection arguments. On April 13, 2001, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was petitioned to hear the case; the Court, the highest appellate court in Texas for criminal matters, denied review. The case then arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, with a petition being filed July 16, 2002.

Considerations

The Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari agreeing to hear the case on December 2, 2002. Thereafter, a wide array of organizations filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the petitioners as well as the respondents.^[13]

Paul M. Smith delivered the oral argument on behalf of Lawrence on March 26, 2003; the decision was rendered on June 26. The questions before the court were the following:

1. Whether the petitioners' criminal convictions under the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law — which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples — violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws;
2. Whether the petitioners' criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in their home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
3. Whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled.

Decision

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down the Texas law, with five of the justices holding that it violated due process guarantees, and a sixth justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, finding that it violated equal protection guarantees. The majority opinion, which overrules Bowers v. Hardwick, covers similar laws in 12 other states. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion; Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined. Kennedy spent most of his opinion casting doubt on the factual findings of the court in Bowers, that homosexual sodomy is a widely and historically condemned practice. For example, Kennedy cited a 1981 European Court of Human Rights case Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, as part of its argument against the Bowers court's finding that Western civilization condemned homosexuality (the case led to homosexuality being de-criminalised in Northern Ireland, having been decriminalised in the rest of Britain before: England & Wales 1967, Scotland 1980). Chief Justice Burger, concurring in Bowers, had held that "Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization"; Kennedy's citation of European law was in part a response to this blanket citation of the values of "Western civilization."

The Court concluded that, "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled."

The majority decision found that "the intimate, adult consensual conduct at issue here was part of the liberty protected by the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process protections." Holding that "the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," the court struck down the anti-sodomy law as unconstitutional. Kennedy's opinion crucially grounded the right of consenting adults to have sex on how intimate and personal the conduct was to those involved, not on the conduct being traditionally protected by society (as in Bowers), procreative (as in Eisenstadt and Roe), or conducted by married people (as in Griswold). This opened the door in theory to protection of a whole host of sexual activity between consenting adults not protected by other decisions. Kennedy was careful however not to extend the opinion to include governmental recognition of such relationships.

O'Connor's concurrence

Sandra O'Connor concurred with the judgment of the Court, but based her decision on an equal protection argument rather than the majority's due process rationale.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor filed a concurring opinion, agreeing with the invalidation of the Texas anti-sodomy statute, but not with Kennedy's rationale. O'Connor disagreed with both the overturning of Bowers (she had been in the Bowers majority) and with the court's invocation of due process guarantees of liberty in this context. O'Connor instead preferred the equal protection argument which would still strike the law because it was directed against a group rather than an act, but would avoid the inclusion of sexuality under protected liberty.

O'Connor maintained that a sodomy law that was neutral both in effect and application might well be constitutional, but that there was little to fear because "democratic society" would not tolerate it for long. She left the door open for laws which distinguished between homosexuals and heterosexuals on the basis of legitimate state interest, but found that this was not such a law. In some ways, O'Connor's opinion was broader than the majority's, for as Antonin Scalia noted in dissent it explicitly cast doubt on whether laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples could pass rational-basis scrutiny. O'Connor explicitly noted in her opinion that a law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples would pass the rational scrutiny as long as it was designed to preserve traditional marriage, and not simply based on the state's dislike of homosexual persons.

Dissents

Antonin Scalia wrote the main, sharply-worded, dissent.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a sharply worded dissent, which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined. Scalia objected to the Court's decision to revisit Bowers, pointing out that there were many subsequent decisions from lower courts based on Bowers that, with its overturning, might now be open to doubt:

• Williams v. Pryor, which upheld Alabama's prohibition on the sale of sex toys;
• Milner v. Apfel, which asserted that "legislatures are permitted to legislate with regard to morality...rather than confined to preventing demonstrable harms;"
• Holmes v. California Army National Guard, which upheld the federal statute and regulations banning from military service those who engage in homosexual conduct;
• Owens v. State, 352 Md. 663, which held that "a person has no constitutional right to engage in sexual intercourse, at least outside of marriage."

Scalia noted that the same rationale used to overturn Bowers (looking to (1) "whether its foundations have been 'eroded' by subsequent decisions; (2) it has been subject to 'substantial and continuing' criticism; (3) it has not induced 'individual or societal reliance'") could be applied to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, which the Justices in the majority in Lawrence had just recently upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Scalia also criticizes the writers of the opinion for their unwillingness to give the same respect to the doctrine of stare decisis that some of them applied in Casey . There, Scalia notes, stare decisis was of the utmost importance, and that there the court gave even more weight to the concept because of the divisive nature of the case. The Lawrence decision "do[es] not bother to distinguish—or indeed, even bother to mention—the paean to stare decisis coauthored by three Members of today's majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There, when stare decisis meant preservation of judicially invented abortion rights, the widespread criticism of Roe was strong reason to reaffirm it." He goes on to write "Today, however, the widespread opposition to Bowers, a decision resolving an issue as 'intensely divisive' as the issue in Roe, is offered as a reason in favor of overruling it."

Some federal courts have held that the majority opinion in Lawrence was narrow. Upon rehearing Williams v. Pryor after Lawrence was decided, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded: "In short, we decline to extrapolate from Lawrence and its dicta a right to sexual privacy triggering strict scrutiny. To do so would be to impose a fundamental-rights interpretation on a decision that rested on rational-basis grounds, that never engaged in Glucksberg analysis, and that never invoked strict scrutiny" Williams v. Attorney General of Alabama, 378 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2004). Accordingly, Alabama's ban on the sale of sex toys was upheld. In contrast, facing identical facts, the Fifth Circuit struck down Texas' sex toy ban holding that "morality is an insufficient justification for a statute" and "interests in 'public morality' cannot constitutionally sustain the statute after Lawrence. Reliable Consultants, Inc., v. Earle, No. 06-51067, 2008 WL 383034 (5th Cir. Feb. 12, 2008).

Scalia also averred that, State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices.

Justice Thomas wrote the sodomy law was "uncommonly silly", but still upheld it because he believed it did not violate the Constitution.

With this decision, Scalia concluded, the Court "has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda." While Scalia said that he has "nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means," Scalia argued that the Court has an obligation to decide cases neutrally.

Justice Thomas, in a separate short dissenting opinion, wrote that the law which the Court struck down was "uncommonly silly" (a phrase from Justice Potter Stewart's dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut), but that he voted to uphold it as he could find "no general right of privacy" or relevant liberty in the Constitution. He added that if he were a member of the Texas Legislature he would vote to repeal the law.

Broader implications

US sodomy laws by the year when they were repealed or struck down.      Laws repealed or struck down before 1970.      Laws repealed or struck down from 1970-1989.      Laws repealed or struck down from 1989-2002.      Laws struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2003.

Lambda Legal, which brought the case, hailed the decision as "a legal victory so decisive that it would change the entire landscape for the LGBT community."^[14] Jay Alan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice has referred to the decision as having "changed the status of homosexual acts and changed a previous ruling of the Supreme Court... this was a drastic rewrite."^[15] The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's lead attorney in the case, Ruth Harlow stated in an interview after the ruling that "the court admitted its mistake in 1986, admitted it had been wrong then...and emphasized today that gay Americans, like all Americans, are entitled to full respect and equal claim to [all] constitutional rights."^[16]

These reactions reflect widespread opinion that Lawrence v. Texas may ultimately be one of the Supreme Court's more influential decisions.^{[citation needed]} Prof. Laurence Tribe has written that Lawrence "may well be remembered as the Brown v. Board of gay and lesbian America."^[17]

Broader implications of this decision have been speculated, including the following:

• Even though not decided upon equal protection grounds, sexual liberty supporters still hope that the majority decision will call into question other legal limitations on same-sex sexuality, including the right to state recognition of same-sex marriages, and the right to serve openly in the military. The latter appears highly unlikely in light of the Supreme Court's recognition that "the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society."^[18] The United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the last court of appeals for Courts-Martial before the Supreme Court, has upheld that Lawrence applies to Article 125 of the UCMJ, the article banning Sodomy. However, the court has twice upheld prosecutions under Article 125 (the article prohibiting sodomy), in United States v. Marcum and United States v. Stirewalt, finding that the article was "constitutional as applied to Appellant"^[19][20] and when applied as necessary to preserve good order and discipline in the armed forces. Although no court has interpreted the U.S. Constitution to require states to allow same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health that the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts required that same-sex couples be given full marriage rights, and similar decisions have occurred in California, Connecticut, and Iowa which embrace the reasoning used in Lawrence v. Texas in reaching decisions under their own respective state constitutions. Moreover, several federal district and circuit courts that have considered the extent of Lawrence have held that it is a narrow holding (See Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d 1298 (M.D. Fla. 2005); Lofton v. Sec. of Dep’t of Children & Family Services, 358 F.3d 804 (11th. Cir. 2004); Williams v. Attorney General of Alabama, 378 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2004).) The Supreme Court has not yet accepted any cases that present an opportunity to further define the implications of Lawrence.^{[citation needed]}
• An issue central to the case, particularly focused on during oral argument, was whether laws can be justified merely through invocations of morality without the demonstration of any actual harm. This issue was a major concern for Justice Scalia in his dissent. Many laws would likely fail the test that the Texas sodomy statute failed here, including those prohibiting other forms of sexual behavior considered deviant, or bans against obscene materials. At least one commentator has suggested that laws based on popular morality are properly analyzed under the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, rather than substantive due process. (Jeffrey A. Kershaw, "Towards an Establishment Theory of Gay Personhood," 58 Vanderbuilt Law Review 555 (2005).)^[21]
• This case and its opinions exemplify fundamental debates in constitutional theory. Some argue that the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution should play the central role in constitutional interpretation. Others argue that the courts should have a more active role in expanding concepts of liberty, striking down majoritarian laws when they believe it necessary to protect unpopular minority groups and conduct. Furthermore, there are those who consider the Founding Fathers' intent for the Constitution to be somewhat flexible to accommodate changing culture. The range of general positions have their judicial and scholarly supporters.^{[citation needed]}
• Central to the conflict over constitutional interpretation is the doctrine of substantive due process, a doctrine that is supposed to protect rights not explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution but still considered "implicit in ordered liberty." Many of the applications of this doctrine have been the target of criticism that the justices have read their personal views into the Constitution (see, for example, Lochner v. New York). The right to privacy, particularly in the context of abortion, is considered by some contemporary critics to be just such an unwarranted and excessive judicial invention. In light of this, it may be significant that Justice Kennedy's majority opinion focused on liberty rather than privacy. Though both are embraced under substantive due process, the shift might signal a significant change in the theoretical basis of the Court's fundamental rights jurisprudence, perhaps in an attempt to skirt the usual criticism over a general privacy right (see due process). Further, substantive due process is traditionally only to be used to protect what the court finds to be a "fundamental right". Since Kennedy's majority opinion at no time uses the term "fundamental right" to describe the conduct at issue, he leaves open the question of what level of scrutiny should be applied to examine laws abridging the conduct: "rational basis" scrutiny, which gives great deference to the legislature, or so-called "heightened" or "strict" scrutiny, which almost always results in striking down the government's action. Though the Texas statute was struck down here, Kennedy used language similar to "rational basis" cases in the past. This ambiguity creates difficulty for the states in trying to decide what types of laws will not be tolerated under the court's new reasoning.^{[citation needed]}
• The Court has not ruled on statutes prohibiting adult incest, adultery, prostitution, and other forms of sexual intimacy between consenting adults. Some say that Lawrence may have created a slippery slope for these laws to eventually fall. Conservative critics argue that the Court's doctrine in areas of sexual intimacy will not be entirely consistent internally until these issues are dealt with explicitly.^{[citation needed]}
• Many proponents of same-sex marriage draw upon Lawrence in their Constitutional reasoning.^[22] The non-binding concurring opinion of Justice O'Connor stated—in refusing to overrule her prior decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, that "preserving the traditional institution of marriage" is indeed a "legitimate state interest" and that "other reasons exist to promote the institution of marriage beyond mere moral disapproval of an excluded group." Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (O'Connor, J. concurring).

• Sexual liberty proponents believe that Lawrence explicitly analogized same-sex sodomy and mixed-sex sodomy, and that Lawrence severed the link between constitutional protection of sexual conduct and whether the activity is procreative or takes place within the marital relationship or is traditionally protected by society, the logic of Lawrence casts considerable doubt on laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples, notwithstanding the not-so-subtle suggestions in both the majority opinion and in Justice O'Connor's concurrence that the court is not willing to listen to this argument, and that some of the justices (Kennedy and O'Connor specifically) would switch sides to vote with the dissenters in this case if the issue of gay marriage came before them. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (O'Connor, J. concurring).^{[citation needed]}

Impact on subsequent cases

• Lawrence had the additional impact of invalidating age of consent laws that differed based on sexual orientation. Soon after the Lawrence decision, the Supreme Court ordered the State of Kansas to review its 1999 "Romeo and Juliet" law that reduces the punishment for a teenager under 18 years of age who has consensual sexual relations with a minor no more than four years their junior, but explicitly excludes same-sex conduct from the sentence reduction.^[23] In 2004 the Kansas Appeals Court upheld the law as is, but the Kansas Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower court's ruling on October 21, 2005,^[24] in State v. Limon, 280 Kan. 275, 122 P.3d 22 (2005). The United States Supreme Court order for the Kansas court to review the law in light of Lawrence would seem to suggest that the age of consent must be the same for mixed-sex couples and same-sex couples.^[25]
• Subsequent federal and state case law has been quite explicit in limiting the scope of Lawrence and upholding traditional state regulations on marriage, expressly allowing a marriage-procreation link. (See Standhardt v. Superior Court ex rel County of Maricopa, 77 P.3d 451 (Ariz. App. 2003); Morrison v. Sadler, 2003 WL 23119998 (Ind. Super. Ct.) cert. denied (2003); Hernandez v Robles (2005 NYSlipOp 25057)).
• Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent raises the question of whether other prohibitions on the private sexual behavior of consenting adults are unconstitutional, e.g. cases of incest. In Muth v. Frank, 412 F.3d 808 (7th Cir. 2005), the 7th Circuit declined to extend its reasoning to cases of consensual adult incest, although it did rule that Lawrence v. Texas was "a new substantive rule and [...] thus retroactive". The case was distinguished because parties were not similarly situated since there is in the latter case an enhanced possibility of genetic mutation of a possible offspring.
• In Martin v. Ziherl, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled the state's fornication law unconstitutional.
• In the recent Holm case a polygamist attempted to use the Lawrence ruling to overturn Utah's laws banning this polygamist relationships. The Supreme Court refused to hear his plea. (See State v. Holm, 137 P.3d 726, 738-40 (Utah 2006), cert. denied, 127 S.Ct. 1371 (2007)).
• The Connecticut Supreme Court rejected an argument based on Lawrence that a teacher had a constitutional right to engage in sexual activity with his (female) students.^[26][27]

As with all Supreme Court cases, the meaning of Lawrence will deepen as it is interpreted by lower state and federal courts, legal scholars, and the Supreme Court itself, revealing how broadly its guarantees of liberty extend.

Ongoing Debate Over the Level of Scrutiny Applied in Lawrence

Narrower Interpretation

As Justice Scalia and commentators have noted, the majority did not appear to apply the standard of review, strict scrutiny, which would be appropriate if the Lawrence majority had recognized a full-fledged "fundamental right."^[28] Had a fundamental right been present, any burden on that right would only have been held constitutional had it survived "strict scrutiny" and been found to be narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest.^[29] Scalia insists the majority, instead, applied "an unheard-of form of rational-basis review that will have far-reaching implications beyond this case."^[28]

Broader Interpretation

However, Justice Scalia's limited interpretation of Lawrence through the lens of Gluckberg's narrow two-tiered scrutiny fails to reckon with the majority's opinion on its own terms. For example, Nan Hunter has argued that Lawrence used a new method of substantive due process analysis, and that the Court intended to abandon its old method of categorizing due process rights as either "fundamental," or not, as too restrictive.^[30] This interpretation is more consistent with the open-ended balancing style that the more liberal justices have consistently advocated.^[31] For example, in the very case of Washington v. Glucksberg, cited by Justice Scalia in his Lawrence dissent, Justice Souter argued at length that the role of the Court in all cases, including unenumerated rights cases, is to ensure that the government's action has not been arbitrary.^[32] Similarly, Justice Stevens has repeatedly criticised tiered scrutiny, and prefers a more active judicial balancing test based on reasonability.^[33] Thus, according to the more liberal wing of the Court, in order to ensure that a government's action is not arbitrary, the government must present some evidence to justify their decisions when they interfere with a person's liberty, which they define more broadly. On oral argument in Lawrence, Justice Souter found the justifications Texas presented unconvincing: "All right, so you said, you said procreation, marriage and children, those are your three justifications. Now from what you recently said, I don't see what it has to do with marriage, since, in fact, marriage has nothing to do with the conduct that either this or other statutes do or don't forbid. I don't see what it has to do with children, since, in fact, the gay people can certainly adopt children and they do. And I don't see what it has to do with procreation, because that's the same as the children. All right. So... so what is the justification for this statute, other than, you know, it's not what they say on the other side, is this is simply, I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell."^[34] Thus, based on the weakness of the justifications presented by Texas, the Court was forced to conclude: "The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."^[35]

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 539
• Bowers v. Hardwick
• Kentucky v. Wasson
• New York v. Onofre
• Sex-related court cases

Footnotes

1. ^ Official 52-page written document compilationPDF (539 KiB) Syllabus, majority opinion, concurrence, and dissents.
2. ^ Illinois in 1961 became the first state to repeal its sodomy law. Laws of Illinois 1961, page 1983, enacted July 28, 1961, effective Jan. 1, 1962. The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States: Illinois.
3. ^ http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/gen/24578res20060316.html
4. ^ Opinion of the Court (Griswold v. Connecticut)
5. ^ Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. at 453.
6. ^ Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. at 219.
7. ^ Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. at 216.
8. ^ Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. at 578.
9. ^ Douglas Martin, "Tyron Garner, 39, Plaintiff in Pivotal Sodomy Case, Dies", The New York Times, September 14, 2006. Garner was unemployed at the time of his arrest, but later sold barbecue from a street stand.
10. ^ Robert R. Eubanks, 22 July 1958–14 October 2000. Social Security Death Index.
11. ^ Dale Carpenter, "The Unknown Past of Lawrence v. Texas", 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1464.
12. ^ Section 21.06 was declared unconstitutional by Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S.Ct. 2472. TITLE 5. OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON CHAPTER 21. SEXUAL OFFENSES
13. ^ For a full list of all the organizations and individuals that filed amicus briefs, see here.
14. ^ http://www.lambdalegal.org/cgi-bin/iowa/documents/record?record=1356
15. ^ ACLJ • American Center for Law & Justice
16. ^ CNN.com - Transcripts
17. ^ Laurence H. Tribe: "Lawrence v. Texas: The 'Fundamental Right' That Dare Not Speak Its Name",Harvard Law Review,117:1894-95 (2004).
18. ^ Parker v. Levy (1974)
19. ^ U. S. v. Marcum
20. ^ U. S. v. Stirewalt
21. ^ "Towards an Establishment Theory of Gay Personhood". Vanderbuilt Law Review. 2005-03-01. http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/3604572-1.html. 
22. ^ http://marriagelaw.cua.edu/Law/cases/wa/anderson/MotionSJ.pdf
23. ^ Sodomylaws.Org
24. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}
25. ^ Sodomylaws.Org
26. ^ http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctteachersex0221.artfeb21,0,2672269.story?track=mostemailedlink
27. ^ http://www.jud.state.ct.us/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR281/281CR39.pdf
28. ^ ^{a b} Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. at 586.
29. ^ Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997)
30. ^ Nan D. Hunter: "Living with Lawrence", Minnesota Law Review, 88:1104 (2004).
31. ^ San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriquez, 411 U.S. 1, 98 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (showing "disagreement with the Court's rigidified approach to equal protection analysis").
32. ^ Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997)(Souter, J., concurring).
33. ^ City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 451 (1985) (Stevens, J., concurring): "I have never been persuaded that these so-called 'standards' adequately explain the decisional process."
34. ^ Lawrence v. Texas, 2003 WL 1702534, or http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1542/opinion/transcript Reading of opinion (Transcript).
35. ^ Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S at 578.

References

• Public Domain opinion
• Official oral arguments (Transcript)
• Reading of opinion (Transcript)
• Oral arguments (MP3 file)
• Reading of opinion (MP3 file)
• Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) - full text with links to citations from Supreme Court opinions, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Code, and C.F.R.
• Text file of Supreme Court opinion at Findlaw.com
• Works related to Lawrence v. Texas at Wikisource

Further reading

• Carpenter, Dale (2003). "The Unknown Past of Lawrence v. Texas". Michigan Law Review 102: 1464. doi:10.2307/4141912. 
• Haider-Markel, Donald P. (2003). Media Coverage of Lawrence v. Texas: An Analysis of Content, Tone, and Frames in National and Local News Reporting. http://www.glaad.org/documents/csms/lvt_final.pdf. 
• Tribe, Laurence H. (2003). "Lawrence v. Texas: The Fundamental Right That Dare Not Speak Its Name". Harvard Law Review 117: 1893–1955. doi:10.2307/4093306. 
• Tushnet, Mark (2008). I dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 211–220. ISBN 9780807000366. 
• Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Lawrence v. Texas: A Historic Human Rights Victory (2003).

External links

• Works related to Lawrence v. Texas at Wikisource
• Text of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) is available from:  · Enfacto · resource.org

• "Lawrence v. Texas", case summary.
• Sodomylaws.org
• The Invasion of Sexual Privacy

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