What 2003 Supreme Court case struck down as unconstitutional a Texas law intended to inhibit practices of same-sex couples?

Answer 1

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558 (2003)

In 2003, the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, overturned a Texas State statute prohibiting people from engaging in certain sexual practices. The law particularly targeted homosexual men, two of whom, Lawrence and Garner, police had observed engaging in a private, consensual act in Garner's apartment. The police arrested both men, who were subsequently convicted of committing deviant sexual intercourse in a Texas state court.

The State Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court ruling, citing an earlier US Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick,478 US 186 (1986) as the controlling precedent.

In Lawrence, the US Supreme Court reversed its stance in Bowers and held that the Texas law was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, which had previously been interpreted as including a right to privacy.

Justice Kennedy, in writing the Opinion of the Court, declared the State had no legitimate interest in controlling a personal relationship, nor the right to interfere with personal liberty by criminally punishing those who chose to engage in consensual acts.

Justice Kennedy also noted that the states' attitudes toward sodomy laws were changing, and that the number of states with such laws on their books had declined from 25 to 13 in the years following the Bowers ruling.