Lawrence v. Texas

Lawrence v. Texas (2003) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down laws criminalizing consensual sodomy. The case grew from the 1998 arrest of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in a Houston apartment under a Texas law that banned certain intimate conduct between people of the same sex. In a 6-3 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court held that such laws violated the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the state had no legitimate interest in policing private consensual conduct between adults. The decision overruled the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick and is one of the most important legal victories in LGBTQ+ history.