Lawrence v. Texas

Facts

Officers of the Harris County Police Department in Houston, Texas, were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where John Geddes Lawrence lived. The opinion notes that the officers' right to enter does not seem to have been questioned. Inside, the officers saw Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. Both men were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged. The complaints charged each of them with deviate sexual intercourse with a member of the same sex. A Texas statute made it an offense to engage in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defined that term to cover contact between the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another, and penetration of the genitals or anus with an object. It applied only to participants of the same sex. The offense was a class C misdemeanor, a minor offense in the Texas legal system. Both men were adults, and their conduct was private and consensual.

Issues

1. Does the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment allow two adults to engage in private, consensual sexual conduct, so that Texas cannot make Lawrence and Garner's conduct a crime?
2. Should the Court overrule Bowers v. Hardwick, which had sustained a Georgia law making sodomy a crime against a constitutional challenge?

Holding

Lawrence and Garner were free as adults to engage in their private, consensual conduct as an exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest that can justify its intrusion into their personal and private lives. Bowers v. Hardwick was not correct when it was decided, and it is overruled.