In Lawrence v. Texas, decided June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that states cannot criminalize private, consensual sexual conduct between same-sex adults. The majority grounded the decision in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, holding that the liberty it protects extends to intimate choices adults make in their own homes. The ruling wiped out sodomy laws still on the books in 13 states and expressly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 decision that had allowed such laws to stand.
How the Case Started
On September 17, 1998, Harris County sheriff’s deputies entered a Houston apartment after a neighbor, Robert Eubanks, falsely reported that a man inside was armed. There was no weapon. The deputies instead found John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaged in a consensual sexual act and arrested both men under a Texas statute that criminalized same-sex sexual contact.1Texas State Historical Association. Lawrence v. Texas Lawrence and Garner were held overnight, charged, and convicted. They pleaded no contest to preserve their right to challenge the law on constitutional grounds, then worked their way through the Texas courts until the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in December 2002 to hear the case.
The Law They Were Charged Under
Texas Penal Code Section 21.06, titled “Homosexual Conduct,” made it a criminal offense for a person to engage in certain sexual acts with another person of the same sex.2State of Texas. Texas Code Penal Code 21.06 – Homosexual Conduct Identical conduct between opposite-sex partners was not covered. The offense was a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $500 and no jail time.3State of Texas. Texas Code Penal 12.23 – Class C Misdemeanor
The fine was small. The consequences were not. A conviction produced a criminal record that followed a person into job applications, housing checks, and licensing reviews, and the statute itself labeled an entire class of people as criminals for conduct that was legal for everyone else.
What the Supreme Court Decided
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The Court held that the Texas statute violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Kennedy framed the question not as whether the Constitution protects a particular sexual act, but as whether it protects the freedom of adults to form intimate relationships without government punishment. “Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places,” Kennedy wrote. “Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Opinion of the Court
The majority rejected the argument that a state’s desire to enforce a moral code could, standing alone, justify criminalizing private conduct between consenting adults. Kennedy wrote that Lawrence and Garner “are entitled to respect for their private lives” and that “[t]he State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Opinion of the Court The Texas law, the Court concluded, furthered no legitimate state interest sufficient to justify its intrusion.
Overruling Bowers v. Hardwick
The majority went further than deciding the case in front of it. It expressly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 decision that had upheld a similar Georgia sodomy law. In Bowers, the Court had described the question as whether the Constitution confers a “fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.” Kennedy said that framing was wrong from the start. “To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward,” he wrote, “just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse.”4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Opinion of the Court
Kennedy’s conclusion was unusually direct: “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.”4Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Opinion of the Court The Court rarely says a prior decision was wrong the day it was issued. That reversal removed the legal foundation states had used for nearly two decades to defend criminal sodomy laws.
Justice O’Connor’s Different Route
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor agreed the Texas law had to fall but reached that result on different grounds. She had joined the Bowers majority in 1986 and was not willing to say that decision had been wrong. Instead, she rested her vote on the Equal Protection Clause: Section 21.06 targeted same-sex couples while leaving identical conduct between opposite-sex couples untouched. “Moral disapproval of this group, like a bare desire to harm the group, is an interest that is insufficient to satisfy rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause,” she wrote, adding that such a law “runs contrary to the values of the Constitution.”5Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – O’Connor Concurrence Her approach would have left Bowers intact, meaning a state could still enforce a sodomy law that applied equally to everyone. The majority closed off that possibility.
The Dissents
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, dissented sharply. He argued that the Texas law was a legitimate expression of majority moral views, that no historical tradition protected the conduct at issue, and that nothing in the Constitution prevented a state from criminalizing it.6Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558 (2003) Scalia also warned that the majority’s reasoning would eventually require the recognition of same-sex marriage, since the same logic would erode laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Twelve years later, the Court cited Lawrence in doing exactly that.
Justice Thomas wrote a brief separate dissent. He called the Texas law “uncommonly silly” and said that as a state legislator he would vote to repeal it. But as a justice, he could find no “general right of privacy” in the Constitution that authorized the Court to strike it down.7Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas – Thomas Dissent
What Changed Nationwide
When the decision came down, 13 states still had sodomy statutes on the books. Four applied only to same-sex conduct; the other nine criminalized the same acts regardless of the sex of the participants. Lawrence invalidated all of them at once and set a constitutional floor no state could drop below.
A dozen states have never formally repealed their now-unenforceable statutes. The laws sit in state codes as dead letter, legally void but still visible. Repeal efforts have stalled repeatedly, and while no prosecution could survive a constitutional challenge, advocacy groups have argued that leaving the laws in place sends a message and creates confusion for law enforcement.
Legacy and Current Status
The principle established in Lawrence, that constitutional liberty covers the intimate choices of adults, became the basis for a series of later decisions. The Court cited Lawrence when it struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor (2013) and when it recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).8Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal statutory protection for same-sex and interracial marriages and requires all states to recognize such marriages performed in any state.9Congress.gov. HR 8404 – 117th Congress (2021-2022) Respect for Marriage Act
The decision’s long-term stability is not entirely settled. In his 2022 concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Thomas called for the Court to reconsider its substantive due process precedents, a category that includes Lawrence. No other justice joined that call, and the Dobbs majority opinion said it was not casting doubt on precedents other than Roe v. Wade. Because Lawrence rests on the same due process reasoning that Dobbs rejected in the abortion context, legal scholars continue to debate whether its foundation is as secure as it once appeared. The Respect for Marriage Act was passed in part as a legislative backstop against that uncertainty.