Lawrence v. Texas: Encyclopedia II - Lawrence v. Texas - History

Lawrence v. Texas - History

Lawrence v. Texas - Prior case law

Under the traditional common-law, the rights of sexual partners were protected through the marriage contract. Thus, sex outside of the marital contract was unprotected and frequently punished by laws prohibiting fornication, adultery, and sodomy, among other crimes. By the 1960s, as attitudes towards sexual relations, marriage, and the role of women began to change, so did the law. Taboos against pre-marital sex waned, "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 mores, the acceptance of same-sex relationships, and the number of people seeking such relationships openly, also increased, to the point that many states repealed their sodomy laws in the 1970s.

As social mores changed, so did the law. The Supreme Court, in 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut, joined this trend toward sexual liberation, striking 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." The Court was careful to limit its recognition of this right to married couples. Eisenstadt v. Baird, decided in 1972, severely eroded the traditional conception of marriage rights by holding in dicta that if the right recognized in Griswold "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 appeared to give constitutional protection to all procreative sexual intercourse (and was held to apply to guarantee a right to an abortion in 1973's highly controversial Roe v. Wade), not just sex occurring between married partners.

In 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to sodomy laws brought by an active homosexual who had been arrested but was not prosecuted for engaging in oral sex 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 sustain the law in question. If the court were to hold otherwise, argued Justice White, the Court would be replacing its own moral judgments with those of the people's elected representatives. The Court's decision in Bowers may have reflected its historical circumstances: the AIDS epidemic was just coming into national consciousness, and with the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade having come under heavy attack, the Court stood reluctant to extend Roe further.

Justice Blackmun wrote a dissent in Bowers arguing that the majority's conception of liberty was too cramped, and many legal commentators agreed. The Kentucky Supreme Court declined to follow the Court's analysis in 1992's Kentucky v. Wasson, striking down its state's sodomy law on the basis of its state constitution. The Supreme Court raised the hopes of gays with its decision in 1996's Romer v. Evans, striking down a Colorado constitutional provision repealing local antidiscrimination ordinances involving sexual orientation. With AIDS having died down in the U.S., all but 13 states having repealed their sodomy laws (where all states had such laws in place 50 years ago), and public perception of homosexuals favorable, the viability of the Bowers decision stood in some doubt.

Lawrence v. Texas - Lawrence and Garner are arrested

The petitioners, medical technologist John Geddes Lawrence, 60, and street-stand barbecue vendor Tyron Garner, 36, were found having consensual anal sex in Lawrence's apartment in the suburbs 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 Roger David Nance, 41, 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; Nance later admitted that he was lying, pled 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 deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex," apparently prohibiting anal and oral sex between members of the same sex, but not between members of the opposite sex. 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 not constitutional since it prohibits sodomy between same-sex couples but not between heterosexual couples, and also on right to privacy grounds (also known as the "substantive due process" argument).

This said that the right to privacy for heterosexual couples had previously been recognized to include sex, including sex using contraception, (i.e., non-procreative sex, but not sodomy). After the Criminal Court rejected this request, they pleaded no contest, reserving their right to file an appeal, and were fined $125 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 14th District 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki