Case brief summary
The Constitution protects a personal liberty for adults to make private choices about intimate relationships without the government criminalizing them.
Facts
Texas police entered an apartment and found two men engaging in consensual sexual activity, then arrested and convicted them under a law banning same sex intimate conduct.
Procedural history
A Texas trial court convicted the men after they pleaded no contest, and a Texas appeals court upheld the convictions by relying on an earlier Supreme Court decision allowing states to ban such conduct.
Issue
Does a state law that makes it a crime for two people of the same sex to engage in private consensual intimate conduct violate the constitutional right to liberty?
Holding
The Texas law is unconstitutional because it violates the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause, a constitutional promise that limits government power over personal choices, and the earlier Supreme Court decision allowing such bans is overturned.
Reasoning
Moral disapproval alone isn't enough to make private consensual adult conduct a crime. Adults have a right to make personal, intimate choices without government interference.
Opinions
Majority (Kennedy): The Due Process Clause protects adults' liberty to engage in private consensual intimate conduct, so the Texas law is unconstitutional and the earlier case allowing such bans is overruled.
Concurrences (O'Connor): The law should be struck down under the Equal Protection Clause, which requires similar treatment under the law, because it punishes only same sex couples based on moral disapproval alone.
Dissent (Scalia): The Court wrongly abandoned respect for prior rulings and used an unusual form of review to strike down a law that reflects the state's legitimate interest in promoting traditional moral views.
Dissent (Thomas): The law is a foolish exercise of lawmaking power, but the Constitution contains no general right to privacy that allows courts to strike it down.