page_title: Lawrence v. Texas
section_title: Opinion of the Court
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence v. Texas / Decision / Opinion of the Court
caption_attribution_description: English: Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
context_page_description: Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. laws prohibiting private homosexual activity between consenting adults are unconstitutional. The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases, such as Roe v. Wade, had found the U.S. Constitution provides, even though it is not explicitly enumerated. The Court based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's own relationships and of American traditions of non-interference with private sexual decisions between consenting adults.
  In 1998, John Geddes Lawrence Jr. was arrested along with an acquaintance at his apartment in Harris County, Texas, when sheriff's deputies found them engaging in sexual intercourse. Lawrence and his partner, Tyron Garner, were charged with a misdemeanor under Texas' anti-sodomy law; both pleaded no contest and received a fine. Assisted by the American civil rights organization Lambda Legal, Lawrence and Garner appealed their sentences to the Texas Courts of Appeals, which ruled in 2000 that the sodomy law was unconstitutional.
context_section_description: Five justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Court ruled that Texas's law prohibiting private homosexual activity between consenting adults violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The Court did not speak of private sexual activity as a fundamental right that might require the highest "strict scrutiny" standard of judicial review. Instead, it focused on why the Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick was wrong.
  First, the Court stated that its decision in Bowers went against its statements in cases involving child-rearing (Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Meyer v. Nebraska), contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird), and abortion (Roe v. Wade) that the Constitution protects a right to privacy and personal autonomy. Next, Kennedy wrote that in Bowers the Court had misread the historical record regarding laws criminalizing homosexual relations. He stated that, after further research, the Court had found that historical American anti-sodomy laws had been directed at "nonprocreative sexual activity more generally," rather than specifically at homosexual acts, contrary to the Court's conclusions in Bowers. Combined with the fact that these laws were often unenforced, the Court saw this as constituting a tradition of avoiding interference with private sexual activity between consenting adults.
  Lastly, Kennedy noted that Bowers's jurisprudential foundation had been weakened by two subsequent cases involving sexuality (Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Romer v. Evans), and that the reasoning of Bowers had been criticized in the United States and rejected by most other developed Western countries. For this reason, Kennedy stated that there was a jurisprudential basis to think that it should be "an integral part of human freedom" for consenting adults to choose to privately engage in sexual activity.
  Kennedy wrote: "The petitioners [Lawrence and Garner] 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." Kennedy reviewed the assumption the court made in Bowers, using the words of Chief Justice Burger's concurring opinion in that case, that "Condemnation of [homosexual practices] is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards." He reviewed the history of legislation that criminalized certain sexual practices, but without regard for the gender of those involved. He cited the Model Penal Code's recommendations since 1955, the Wolfenden Report of 1957, and a 1981 decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Case 7525/76 Dudgeon v United Kingdom.
caption: Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the Court's opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.
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