Lawrence v. Texas is the 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down state laws criminalizing private, consensual sex between adults of the same sex. By a 6-3 vote, the Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects intimate personal decisions from government interference, invalidating sodomy statutes in Texas and roughly a dozen other states in a single stroke.1Cornell Law Institute. Lawrence v. Texas
How the Case Started
On September 17, 1998, Harris County sheriff’s deputies entered John Lawrence’s Houston apartment after a false report that a man was “going crazy with a gun” inside. There was no gun. What deputies found instead was Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaged in a private, consensual sexual act. Both men were arrested, held overnight, and charged under Texas Penal Code Section 21.06, the state’s “Homosexual Conduct” law.1Cornell Law Institute. Lawrence v. Texas
The statute made it a criminal offense for a person to engage in sexual intercourse with another person of the same sex.2State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 21.06 – Homosexual Conduct Identical conduct between opposite-sex couples was legal. The criminality turned entirely on the sex of the people involved. Lawrence and Garner pleaded no contest, preserving their right to challenge the law’s constitutionality, and their case eventually reached the Supreme Court.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
What the Supreme Court Held
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, grounding the decision in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His central point was that the word “liberty” in the Constitution is not limited to freedom from physical restraint. It includes the freedom to make personal decisions about intimate relationships without being treated as a criminal.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
The government’s power to regulate behavior, Kennedy wrote, is at its weakest inside a person’s home. Adults are “entitled to respect for their private lives,” and the state “cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.” The Constitution, he explained, promises “a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.”3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
The Court also rejected the argument that moral disapproval alone can justify a criminal law. Texas had no legitimate state interest strong enough to reach into a private home and punish adults for consensual conduct. That conclusion set a high bar for any future attempt to criminalize private behavior between consenting adults on morality grounds.
The immediate effect was national. Sodomy statutes that remained in roughly thirteen states became unenforceable overnight. Lawrence and Garner’s convictions were reversed, and the charges against them dismissed.
Overturning Bowers v. Hardwick
To reach that result, the Court had to overrule one of its own precedents. In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), a 5-4 majority had upheld a Georgia sodomy law and declared that the Constitution did not protect same-sex sexual conduct. That ruling had stood for seventeen years and given states legal cover to enforce similar statutes.
The Lawrence majority concluded that Bowers was “not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.” Kennedy found that the historical narrative Bowers relied on, describing longstanding prohibitions on same-sex conduct, was inaccurate, and that its foundations had “sustained serious erosion” over the intervening years.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Kennedy also addressed stare decisis, the doctrine that courts should follow past rulings for the sake of stability. He acknowledged that overruling precedent is serious, but argued that no one had built major legal or economic arrangements in reliance on Bowers the way parties might rely on a property or contract ruling. The decision had “not induced detrimental reliance” that would weigh against correction.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Justice O’Connor’s Concurrence
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor agreed the Texas law had to fall, but she got there by a different route. Rather than the Due Process Clause, she relied on the Equal Protection Clause. Her focus was the statute’s selectivity: Texas criminalized intimate conduct only when it involved same-sex couples, leaving identical conduct between opposite-sex couples untouched. That unequal treatment, she concluded, had no rational basis.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
The distinction mattered. Under O’Connor’s approach, Bowers would not need to be overruled, and a sodomy statute that applied equally to everyone might still survive. The majority chose the wider ground, holding that the conduct itself was constitutionally protected, not merely that regulation had to be evenhanded.
The Dissents
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas. He argued that the majority had applied “an unheard-of form of rational-basis review” that stripped states of the power to legislate based on moral judgments. Under the framework of Washington v. Glucksberg, Scalia wrote, only rights “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” qualify for heightened constitutional protection, and same-sex sexual conduct did not meet that test.4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Dissent
Scalia also predicted where the reasoning would lead. He wrote that the decision was the “logical conclusion” of a chain that would end in the recognition of same-sex marriage. When the majority disclaimed any effect on marriage, Scalia responded: “Do not believe it.”4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Dissent
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a brief separate dissent calling the Texas statute “uncommonly silly.” As a legislator, he wrote, he would vote to repeal it, and he did not think prosecuting private consensual conduct was “a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.” But he could find no “general right of privacy” in the Constitution and so could not join the majority.5Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Thomas Dissent
The Path to Obergefell
Scalia’s prediction played out in twelve years. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage as a fundamental right, and it drew heavily on Lawrence to do so. The Obergefell majority cited the earlier ruling repeatedly, borrowing its reasoning about autonomy, dignity, and the link between liberty and equality. It quoted Lawrence’s recognition that gay and lesbian people can “enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons,” and applied that principle to marriage itself.6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015)
Are Sodomy Laws Still on the Books?
Yes, in roughly a dozen states. Lawrence made these statutes unenforceable but did not order legislatures to repeal them. No prosecutor can bring charges under them, but the laws remain in state codes because lawmakers have not removed them.
Whether Lawrence itself remains secure has become a live question. In his 2022 concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Thomas wrote that the Court should reconsider “all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” naming Lawrence and Obergefell specifically. Other justices in the Dobbs majority distanced themselves from that view, with Justice Kavanaugh stating that overruling Roe did not mean overruling Lawrence or similar cases. The debate has kept pressure on state legislatures to formally repeal the dormant statutes rather than rely solely on the 2003 ruling to keep them inert.