Sodomy laws in the United States have been unenforceable since 2003, when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that criminalizing private, consensual sexual conduct between adults violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling applied nationwide and did not require state legislatures to act. Even so, roughly a dozen states still carry sodomy or “crime against nature” statutes in their criminal codes, and in a handful of documented cases those dead-letter laws have led to wrongful arrests years after the Supreme Court struck them down.
What Lawrence v. Texas Did
In 1998, Houston police responded to a reported weapons disturbance at a private apartment, entered, and found John Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaged in a sexual act. Both were arrested, held overnight, and charged with “deviate sexual intercourse” under Texas law. Each was fined $200 plus court costs. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the Texas law was unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion held that consenting adults have a liberty interest in their private sexual conduct, protected by the Due Process Clause. The Court overruled its earlier 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which had reached the opposite conclusion.1Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
The practical effect was immediate. Every remaining state sodomy statute became unenforceable as applied to consensual adult conduct. Police can no longer arrest, and prosecutors can no longer charge, for private sexual acts between consenting adults, regardless of whether the state legislature has removed the old language from its books.2Cornell Law School. Lawrence v. Texas
States That Still Have These Laws on the Books
The Supreme Court can declare a statute unenforceable, but it cannot delete the text from a state’s code. That requires a repeal bill passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor. Many legislatures have not bothered. The statutes left behind are sometimes called “zombie laws” because they exist in print but have no legal force.
States including Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas still have some version of a sodomy or “crime against nature” statute on the books. Someone browsing one of these states’ online legal databases could easily find language declaring the conduct illegal, often with no disclaimer that the law was struck down two decades ago. Some states have taken recent action to repeal, so the list continues to shrink, but the cleanup has been slow.
The reluctance to repeal is usually political rather than legal. Some lawmakers see no urgency in removing a law courts have already neutralized. Others worry a vote to repeal a sodomy statute could be used against them in a campaign. The result is a gap between what the law says on paper and what it means in practice.
When a Zombie Law Can Still Hurt You
An unenforceable statute may sound harmless. It is not. The most documented example comes from a Louisiana sheriff’s office that used the state’s “crime against nature” statute to arrest gay men years after Lawrence. Officers pointed to the law’s continued presence in the state code as justification, even though no prosecution could legally follow. Any arrest under a zombie sodomy law is unlawful and violates the arrested person’s constitutional rights, but the arrest itself still disrupts a life, creates a record, and can cause lasting damage.
A subtler problem involves sex offender registries. Some people convicted under sodomy laws before Lawrence remain on state sex offender databases. In most states, a person in this situation can petition the state’s justice department or a court to have their name removed, but the process is not automatic and varies widely by jurisdiction. Filing fees for related petitions can range from roughly $40 to $400 depending on the state and the type of filing.
Zombie laws also carry stigma. For LGBTQ residents of states that have not repealed, the presence of a statute labeling their private conduct as criminal has drawn long-standing criticism from legal scholars and civil rights organizations, regardless of the law’s actual enforceability.
Clearing a Past Sodomy Conviction
People convicted under sodomy laws that have since been invalidated face a patchwork of options for clearing their records. There is no single federal process for civilian convictions. Each state sets its own rules for expungement or record sealing, and the availability of relief varies.
A few states have created specific pathways for people convicted under laws that were later decriminalized. Connecticut authorizes the erasure of convictions when the underlying conduct has been decriminalized. The District of Columbia allows sealing of records for offenses that have been legalized.3National Conference of State Legislatures. Record Clearing by Offense
The catch is that many states exclude sex-related offenses from their expungement statutes, even when the underlying law has been struck down. A person convicted of consensual sodomy decades ago may find that the same category that made the conduct a crime now blocks them from clearing the record. California has taken a different approach, creating an executive initiative to identify people convicted under outdated laws prohibiting homosexual activity and fast-track pardon applications through the governor’s office.
Sodomy Convictions Under Military Law
The military kept its own separate sodomy prohibition for decades through Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The old statute was broader than most civilian versions, banning “unnatural carnal copulation” between any two people, including married couples, regardless of sex or gender.
The military did not immediately fall in line after Lawrence. In United States v. Marcum, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces held that Lawrence did not automatically invalidate Article 125 in every military case. The court upheld a sodomy conviction involving a service member and a subordinate in the same chain of command, reasoning that the military’s interest in preventing abuse of authority placed the conduct outside the zone of privacy Lawrence protected.4United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. U.S. v. Marcum
Congress addressed the broader statute in 2013. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 amended Article 125, removing the blanket prohibition on consensual sodomy.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 925 – Art. 125
In June 2024, President Biden issued a proclamation granting a full and unconditional pardon to service members convicted under the old Article 125 for consensual, private acts with adults. The pardon covers qualifying court-martial convictions between May 31, 1951, and December 26, 2013. It does not expunge the conviction from military records, but it removes collateral consequences like restrictions on voting, holding office, and serving on a jury. A pardoned veteran who wants to upgrade a discharge characterization still needs to apply separately to their branch’s Board for Correction of Military or Naval Records; the pardon serves as supporting evidence but does not guarantee a change.6Department of Veterans Affairs. Presidential Proclamation on Certain Violations of Article 125 under the Uniform Code of Military Justice
Could Lawrence Be Overturned?
The 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, raised public concern about whether Lawrence might be next. Justice Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that the Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”7Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)
No other justice joined Thomas on that point. Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to emphasize that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” explicitly naming Lawrence and Obergefell as cases not at issue.7Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)
Overturning Lawrence would require a new case challenging a sodomy law to reach the Court and a majority of justices willing to reverse settled precedent. That is not imminent. It is also the reason civil rights advocates continue to press for formal legislative repeal of the zombie statutes rather than relying on judicial protection alone. If Lawrence were ever reversed, the laws still sitting in a dozen state codes would snap back into force.