The Case of Lawrence v. Texas

The Facts

On September 17, 1998 Houston police were called to the apartment of John Lawrence based on a report from a neighbor that an armed intruder was “going crazy” in Lawrence’s apartment. When police arrived, they found Lawrence and Tyrone Garner engaged in a private consensual sex act. The neighbor later admitted that his allegations were false and was convicted of filing a false report.

Lawrence and his partner were arrested for violating a Texas law prohibiting two persons of the same sex from engaging in certain intimate sexual contact. They were convicted of this misdemeanor and fined $200 each.

The Issue

Does the Texas law violate the Fourteenth Amendment right of due process and/or equal protection?

Arguments for Lawrence

• The law denied them equal protection of the law because it prohibited sexual acts among gay and lesbian people that were permitted among heterosexual couples.
• They also believed that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protected the liberty and privacy interests of same sex and opposite sex couples and prohibited a state from criminalizing private, consensual sex acts among adults.

Arguments for Texas

• The Court should not create new, unwritten rights. The right to intimate relationships does not protect every type of sexual activity, nor does the right of bodily integrity protect people from anything more than invasion of an individual’s body (as in forced medical procedures).
• Fundamental liberty interests are found in “deeply rooted” tradition. In this case, there is no deeply rooted tradition that provides for a right to homosexual sodomy. There is instead a centuries old tradition of criminalizing sodomy.
• The Texas legislature’s belief that homosexual sodomy is immoral provides the rational basis needed for this law.

The Precedent

Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld the constitutionality of a similar law in Georgia, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (their highest state court for criminal cases) affirmed the convictions.

The Supreme Court Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and in June of 2003 issued a 6 to 3 decision overturning the Texas law as well as its earlier precedent (Bowers). The Court found support for Lawrence’s due process argument in earlier privacy rights cases dealing with contraception and abortion.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter… (This case does not involve minors or people paying for sex but rather) two adults who with full and mutual consent …engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. (They) are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence … by making their private sexual conduct a crime.” Four other justices signed on to Justice Kennedy’s opinion. Justice O’Connor agreed with the outcome but wrote in her concurrence that it was their equal protection rather than due process rights that had been violated.

The Dissent

The dissenting justices and other critics of the decision argued that this decision takes away a state’s traditional authority to pass laws that set moral standards and reflect the values and views of its citizens. From this perspective, outlawing such behavior is a logical outcome of democracy, not an example of discrimination. Critics also argued that the decision undermines family values and makes the military’s ban on openly homosexual behavior harder to defend.

Questions

1. What happened in this case?
2. What arguments could Lawrence and Garner make for finding the Texas law unconstitutional? What arguments could Texas make for upholding its law?
3. Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision in this case? Give your reasons.
4. One thing that supporters and critics of the decision agreed about was its importance. Why was it considered so important?