20031776 Club
Supreme Court strikes down sodomy laws; Kennedy writes that intimate, consensual conduct is a liberty the Constitution protects
The 6–3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas voids statutes in 14 states and explicitly reverses the Court's own 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick.
Five years after Houston police arrested John Geddes Lawrence Jr. and Tyron Garner in Lawrence's own apartment — a visit triggered by a false report of a man with a gun — their case reached the Supreme Court. On June 26, 2003, the Court ruled 6–3 in Lawrence v. Texas that state laws criminalizing consensual sodomy between adults were unconstitutional, striking down statutes in 14 states, one U.S. territory, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion held that intimate, consensual conduct falls within the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause — and in doing so, the Court explicitly reversed its own 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick…
