Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-alnd-5_98-cv-01938/USCOURTS-alnd-5_98-cv-01938-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

---

1

 Troy King, in his official capacity as Attorney General for the State of Alabama, was

substituted for the previous occupant of that position pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure

25(d)(1).

2

 Ala. Code § 13A-12-200.2(a)(1) (1975) (Supp. 2005) provides in relevant part: 

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly distribute, possess with

intent to distribute, or offer or agree to distribute any obscene material or any device

designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs

for any thing of pecuniary value. Material not otherwise obscene may be obscene

under this section if the distribution of the material, the offer to do so, or the

possession with the intent to do so is a commercial exploitation of erotica for the sake

of prurient appeal. Any person who violates this subsection shall be guilty of a

misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be punished by a fine of not more than ten

thousand dollars ($10,000) and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or

sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than one year. A second or

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA

NORTHEASTERN DIVISION

SHERRI WILLIAMS, et al., )

)

Plaintiffs, )

)

vs. ) Civil Action No. CV-98-S-1938-NE

)

TROY KING, in his official capacity )

as Attorney General of the State of )

Alabama, )

)

Defendant.

[1] )

CORRECTED MEMORANDUM OPINION

This opinion marks the third occasion on which this court has been required to

address substantive due process challenges to an Alabama statute that criminalizes

the commercial distribution of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily

for the stimulation of human genital organs.”2 See Williams v. Pryor, 41 F. Supp. 2d

FILED

 2006 Mar-15 PM 04:52

U.S. DISTRICT COURT

N.D. OF ALABAMA

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 1 of 56
subsequent violation of this subdivision is a Class C felony if the second or

subsequent violation occurs after a conviction has been obtained for a previous

violation. Upon a second violation, a corporation or business entity shall be fined not

less than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) nor more than fifty thousand dollars

($50,000) [emphasis supplied].

3

See, e.g., Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1274 (“Plaintiffs claim enforcement of Alabama

Code § 13A-12-200.2(a)(1) would impose an undue burden on their fundamental rights of privacy

and personal autonomy guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments

of the United States Constitution.”) (internal marks and footnote omitted).

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1257 (N.D. Ala. 1999) (“Williams I”), rev’d, 240 F.3d 944 (11th Cir. 2000)

(“Williams II”); see also Williams v. Pryor, 220 F. Supp. 2d 1257 (N.D. Ala. 2002)

(“Williams III”),rev’d, 378 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2004) (“Williams IV”). As in prior

opinions, this court will employ the term “sexual devices” as a shorthand replacement

for the cumbersome statutory phrase “any device designed or marketed as useful

primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” 

The plaintiffs are either vendors or users of sexual devices. Their complaint

asserts that enforcement of the subject statute will impose an undue burden upon their

“fundamental rights of privacy and personal autonomy” in violation of the Fourteenth

Amendment’s Due Process Clause.3

 Alternatively, plaintiffs allege that there is no

rational relationship between a wholesale ban on the sale of all sexual devices and a

proper legislative purpose. 

PART ONE

Summary of Facts

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4

 See id. at 1261-73; Williams III, 220 F. Supp. 2d at 1261 passim.

5

See 21 C.F.R. §§ 884.5940, 884.5960.

6 Williams II, 240 F.3d at 947.

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The pertinent factual findings are based upon a stipulated evidentiary record

that was spread at length in both of this court’s previous opinions.4 Those findings

establish that sexual devices have many beneficial medical and psychological

therapeutic uses that are recognized by health-care professionals and the federal Food

and Drug Administration,5

including“frequentprescription in marital and non-marital

sexual or relationship counseling — often as a necessary component for successful

therapy.”6

PART TWO

Prefatory Issues

The Supreme Court jurisprudence that applies to the issues of this case is

extraordinarily complex and subtle. It defies easy summation. There simply is no

easy grouping of cases that comfortably conveys a consistent concept of either the

constitutional basis for or content of plaintiffs’ asserted “rights of privacy and

personal autonomy.” Rather, the doctrinal underpinnings of those allegedly

“fundamental rights” have been cobbled together from a diverse collection of cases,

resulting in a rickety structure. Moreover, debate on the core concepts is far from

being closed, either within the Supreme Court or American society. Therefore, in

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7

 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 469 (1897).

8

Id.

9 Cf. id. at 466 (“[T]he logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and repose

which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of

man. Behind the logical form lies a judgment as to the relative worth and importance of competing

legislative grounds, often an inarticulate and unconscious judgment, it is true, and yet the very root

and nerve of the whole proceeding.”). See also id. at 474 (“We must beware of the pitfall of

antiquarianism, and must remember that for our purposes our only interest in the past is for the light

it throws upon the present.”).

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order to see more clearly how this case should now, on the third attempt, be decided,

it may be helpful to trace from whence it has come. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,

remarked, the “rational study of law is still to a large extent the study of history”

because, without resort to the past, “we cannot know the precise scope of rules which

it is our business to know” when resolving contemporary controversies.7

 A backward

look at the evolution of particular principles and, as here, their application in a

specific case, “is a part of the rational study, because it is the first step toward an

enlightened scepticism, that is, toward a deliberate reconsideration of the worth of

those rules.”8

 Such exercises must be undertaken with caution, however, because

clarity of hindsight does not ensure an equally acute vision of the future.9

 Holmes’s

description of the evolution of common law actions in tort describes precisely, by

way of analogy, the present predicament:

The law did not begin with a theory. It has never worked one out. The

point from which it started and that at which . . . it has arrived, are on

different planes. In the progress from one to the other, it is to be

expected that its course should not be straight and its direction not

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10 O.W. Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 77-78 (1881). Cf. O.W. Holmes, Jr., Codes, and the

Arrangement of the Law, 5 Am. L. Rev. 1 (1870) (“It is the merit of the common law that it decides

the case first and determines the principle afterwards.”).

11 See Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720 (1997) (“By extending constitutional

protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the

arena of public debate and legislative action. We must therefore exercise the utmost care whenever

we are asked to break new ground in this field, lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause

be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of this Court.”) (citations and

internal quotation marks omitted).

12 Regarding the “exigent circumstances” that may justify deviation from Constitutional

protection of individual rights, compare Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216 (1944)

(addressing the infamous internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry in concentration

camps during the Second World War, and stating that “all legal restrictions which curtail the civil

rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. This is not to say that all such restrictions

are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing

public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never

can.”) (emphasis supplied), with Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 402 (1923) (holding that “no

adequate reason” had been shown for a state legislative proscription against the teaching of subjects

in the German language following the end of the First World War, during a “time of peace and

domestic tranquility”). 

13

See William J. Brennan, The Bill of Rights and the States, 36 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 761, 776

(1961) (“The Bill of Rights is the primary source of expressed information as to what is meant by

constitutional liberty. The safeguards enshrined in it are deeply etched in the foundations of

America’s freedoms.”) (emphasis supplied).

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always visible. All that can be done is to point out a tendency, and to

justify it.10 

A. Fundamental Rights and Liberties

The definition of those rights and liberties deemed to be so important that they

are characterized as “fundamental” — and, therefore, beyond the power of popularlyelected legislative assemblies to infringe,11 except in only the most compelling or

exigent circumstances12 — begins with the first ten amendments to the Constitution,

generally referred to as the “Bill of Rights.”13 The first eight of those amendments

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14 Neither theNinthnorTenth Amendments specifically describe individual rights and liberty

interests. Instead, the Ninth Amendment provides that “[t]he enumeration in the Constitution of

certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” whereas the

Tenth states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited

to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Even so, at least three

former Justices of the Supreme Court perceived in the neglected Ninth Amendment a textual basis

for protection of “those personal rights” that are “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of [the

American] people as to be ranked as fundamental,” even if those are “not mentioned explicitly in the

Constitution” or Bill of Rights. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486-87 (1965) (Goldberg,

J., concurring, and joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan) (citation and internal

quotation marks omitted).

15 This principle was confirmed by Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for a unanimous Court

in Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833), and holding that the amendments provided

“security against the apprehended encroachments of the general government — not against those of

the local governments,” and they “contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the

state governments.” Id. at 247. See generally Alpheus T. Mason, The States’ Rights Debate 91-93

(2d ed. 1972); Robert A. Rutland, The Birth of the Bill of Rights 200-215 (1955). 

16 See Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226 (1897) (holding

that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause compelled state and local governments to

award just compensation when it took private property for a public use, thus effectively, even though

not explicitly, absorbing the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause).

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define a hierarchy of rights that the founding generation considered essential to the

preservation of individual liberty, justice, and freedom from arbitrary governmental

intrusions into, as well as purposeless restraints upon, the private lives of citizens.14

Even so, the history of the proposal, adoption, and ratification of those amendments

is perfectly clear on this point: they were intended to provide protection against acts

of only the new, national government.15

 

Beginning in 1897, however, the Supreme Court embarked on a slow course

of gradually “incorporating” some of the specific rights enumerated in the first eight

amendments into the Fourteenth Amendment.

16 The unifying principle giving order

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17 See, e.g., Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 326 (1937) (“If the Fourteenth Amendment

has absorbed them, the process of absorption has had its source in the belief that neither liberty nor

justice would exist if they were sacrificed.”).

18 For a discussion of the specific portions of the Bill of Rights that have been absorbed into

the Fourteenth Amendment, see Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies

§ 6.3.3 (2d ed. 2002), and 2 Ronald D. Rotunda & John E. Nowak, Treatise on Constitutional Law:

Substance and Procedure § 15.6 (3d ed. 1999).

19 Palko, 302 U.S. at 325.

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and coherence to a very long line of “selective incorporation” cases is this: only

those rights deemed essential to the conceptions of liberty or justice were absorbed

into the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.17 Through this process, the

Court has determined over time that, with only a few exceptions, most of the

provisions of the Bill of Rights meet the definition of “fundamental” liberties and,

thus, act as restraints against oppressive and arbitrary actions by state and local

governments, as well as the federal.

18

 

Beyond the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights thus absorbed into and

protected by the Fourteenth Amendment lies a constitutional quagmire, rife with soft

and slippery doctrinal ground, jurisprudential quicksand, and subtle, semantical

snares for the unwary traveler. This is the domain of those rights that — even though

lacking an explicit textual basis in the Constitution — the Supreme Court has

recognized as possessing a value so essential to the preservation of individual

“liberty” that they have been characterized as “fundamental.” They are freedoms

deemed “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,”19 inherent in human nature, and

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20 See Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720 (1997) (listing some, but not all, of those

rights and liberty interests recognized by the Supreme Court as fundamental).

21 Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (“The freedom to marry has long been recognized

as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”);

Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 378, 384 (1978) (“Cases subsequent to Griswold and Loving have

routinely categorized the decision to marry as among the personal decisions protected by the right

of privacy.”); see also Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 95 (1987) (“[T]he decision to marry is a

fundamental right.”).

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consequently inalienable. 

The specific liberty intereststhat fall under the heading of “fundamental rights”

have varied over the course of the American experiment in democratic selfgovernment. For example, rights of “property” were of paramount importance during

the ante-bellum period, and “freedom of contract” held sway for seventy years after

the Civil War. With the decline of “economic substantive due process” following the

head-on collision of the Hughes Court with Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal”

programs, however, those interests lost primacy. From then through the remainder

of the Twentieth Century, personal liberty interests have assumed the position of first

importance. 

Thus far, the Supreme Court has characterized the following, non-textual

liberty interests as “fundamental” and, as such, rights that should prevail if in conflict

with governmental authority or other, less valued, liberties:20 (i) the right to marry;21

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 8 of 56
22 Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942) (“Marriage and procreation are

fundamental” rights.).

23 Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) (invalidating a Connecticut statute banning

the use of contraceptives by married couples); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972) (expanding

the right of privacy articulated in Griswold, and holding that a Massachusetts law prohibiting

distribution of contraceptives to unmarried individuals violated the Equal Protection Clause). “If

the right of privacy means anything,” Justice Brennan wrote in Eisenstadt, “it is the right of the

individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so

fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Id. at 453

(emphasis in original) (majority opinion). See also Carey v. Population Services International, 431

U.S. 678 (1977) (declaring unconstitutional a law providing that only a licensed pharmacist could

provide contraceptives to persons over the age of 16 years, and that no one could distribute them to

persons under the age of 16). 

24 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153

(1973) (“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of

personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or ... in the Ninth Amendment’s

reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not

to terminate her pregnancy.”) (Blackmun, J.).

25 Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972); see also Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110

(1989); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 758-59 (1982) (stating that a “natural parent’s desire for

and right to the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children is an interest

far more precious than any property right”) (citations omitted).

26 Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977).

27 Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 66 (2000) (recognizing that “the Due Process Clause of

the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning

the care, custody, and control of their children”); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925)

(addressing the right of parents to send their children to private and parochial schools); Meyer v.

Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923) (affirming the unwritten right to instruct a child in a foreign

language in a private school).

28 Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485-86 (“Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts

of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the

notions of privacy surrounding the marital relationship.”) (Douglas, J., plurality opinion).

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(ii) the right to procreate;22 (iii) the right to purchase and use contraceptives;23 (iv) the

qualified right to an abortion;24 (v) the right to custody of one’s children;

25 (vi) the

right to keep a family together;26 (vii) the right of parents to direct the education and

upbringing of their children;27 (viii) the right to marital privacy;28 (ix) the right to

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29 Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952).

30 Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 279 (1990) (assuming that the

Constitution grants competent persons a “constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving

hydration and nutrition”).

31 Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969) (holding

that residency requirements for receipt of state welfare benefits violate the right to travel protected

by the Equal Protection Clause); The Passenger Cases, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 283 (1849) (“We are all

citizens of the United States; and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass

and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States. And a tax

imposed by a State for entering its territories or harbours, is inconsistent with the rights which belong

to the citizens of other States as members of the Union, and with the objects which that Union was

intended to attain.”).

32 See U.S. Const. amends. XV (1870), XIX (1920), XXIV (1964), XXVI (1971); see also,

e.g., Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U.S. 621, 626 (1969) (right to vote is a fundamental

right protected by the Equal Protection Clause); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964) (“The

right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and

any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.”); Yick Wo v. Hopkins,

118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886) (holding that the right to vote is a “fundamental political right” because

it is “preservative of all rights”).

33 See, e.g., Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977).

34 See, e.g., Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 16-17 (1956) (quoting Magna Carta as the basis

of the principle: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse, or delay, right or justice. . . . No

free man shall be taken or imprisoned, . . . but by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of

the land.”).

35 Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). But see infra note 98, discussing the conclusion

of the Williams IV majority that Lawrence did not “announce a new fundamental right” to sexual

privacy “or, more broadly, to all forms of sexual intimacy.” 

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bodily integrity;29 (x) the right to refuse unwanted, lifesaving, medical treatment;30

(xi) the right to travel within the United States;31 (xii) the right to vote;32 (xiii) the

qualified right to control the dissemination of private information;33 (xiv) the right of

all persons to equal access to the courts;34 and arguably (xv) the right of adults to

engage in private, consensual, non-commercial, sexual activity common to a

homosexual lifestyle.35

 

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36 “Procedural due process, as the phrase implies, refers to the procedures that the

government must follow before it deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. Classic procedural

due process issues concern what kind of notice and what form of hearing the government must

provide when it takes a particular action.” Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and

Policies § 7.1, at 523 (2d ed. 2002) (emphasis in original). 

37 See, e.g., Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992) (observing that the

substantive component of the Due Process Clause “protects individual liberty against certain

government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them”) (citation

and internal quotation marks omitted); Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65 (2000) (observing that

the substantive component of the Due Process Clause provides “heightened protection against

governmental interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests”).

38 Chemerinsky, supra note 36 at 523-24 (emphasis supplied) (footnote omitted).

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B. Standards for “Substantive Due Process” Review of State Statutes

The Fourteenth Amendment’sDueProcessClauseprovides that “No State shall

. . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” U.S.

Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (1868). In addition to the obvious purpose of guaranteeing

fair procedures,

36 the clause has been construed as including a substantive dimension,

requiring that legislation be fair and reasonable in content, and promote legitimate

governmental objectives.37 “In other words, substantive due processlooks to whether

there is a sufficient justification for the government’s action. Whether there is such

a justification depends very much upon the level of scrutiny used.”38 

1. Rational Basis Test

If a statute impacts only business or economic interests, and does not implicate

fundamental rights or employ “suspect criteria” to define the class of persons

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39 Statutes challenged under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause for

allegedly employing “suspect criteria” to define the class of persons benefitted or burdened by the

law — e.g., an individual’s race or national origin — are subjected to“strict scrutiny.” See, e.g.,

Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989) (“affirmative action” case employing strict

scrutiny standard to review state and local legislation benefitting racial minorities). See generally

Joseph Tussman and Jacobus TenBroek, The Equal Protection of the Laws, 37 Calif. L. Rev. 341,

353 (1949) (“The assertion of human equality is closely associated with the denial that difference

in color or creed, birth or status, are significant or relevant to the way in which men should be

treated. . . . To these differences in the supplicants before her bar, Justice must be blind. Laws

which classify men by color or creed or blood accordingly, are repugnant to the demand for equality,

and therefore, such traits should not be made the basis for the classification of individuals in laws.”).

As Professor Chemerinsky has observed, 

[t]he major difference between due process and equal protection as the basis

for protecting fundamental rights is in how the constitutional arguments are phrased.

If a right is safeguarded under due process, the constitutional issue is whether the

government’s interference is justified by a sufficient purpose. But if the right is

protected under equal protection, the issue is whether the government’s

discrimination as to who can exercise the right is justified by a sufficient purpose.

Although the difference is generally just semantics and phrasing, there can be a real

distinction: If a law denies the right to everyone, then due process would be the best

grounds for analysis; but if a law denies a right to some, while allowing it to others,

the discrimination can be challenged as offending equal protection or the violation

of the right can be objected to under due process.

Chemerinsky, supra note 36, § 10.1.1, at 763 (emphasis supplied) (footnote omitted). 

40 See also James B. Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of

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benefitted or burdened by the legislation,39 then the state’s justification for the law is

evaluated by a standard known as the “rational basis test.” This standard requires

courts to compare the content of a statute to its purported purposes, and to determine

whether the law constitutes a reasonable means of accomplishing (i.e., “is rationally

related to”) a legitimate end or purpose of state government. The salient feature of

this test is that it is “a highly deferential standard that proscribes only the very outer

limits of a legislature’s power.” Williams II, 240 F.3d at 948.40 Statutes tested under

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 12 of 56
Constitutional Law, 7 Harv. L. Rev. 129, 148 (1893) (“The judicial function is merely that of fixing

the outside border of reasonable legislative action, the boundary beyond which the . . . police power,

and legislative power in general, cannot go without violating the prohibitions of the constitution or

crossing the line of its grants.”).

41 See also Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 314-15 (“On rational-basis review, . . . a

statute . . . comes to us bearing a strong presumption of validity, and those attacking the rationality

of the statute have the burden to negative every conceivable basis which might support it. Moreover,

because we never require a legislature to articulate its reasons for enacting a statute, it is entirely

irrelevant for constitutional purposes whether the conceived reason . . . actually motivated the

legislature. . . . In other words, a legislative choice is not subject to courtroom fact-finding and may

be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data.”). In addition, state

legislatures are “allowed leeway to approach a perceived problem incrementally, even if its

incremental approach is significantly over-inclusive or under-inclusive.” Williams II, 240 F.3d at

948-49 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

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this standard are deemed constitutional if “there is any reasonably conceivable state

of facts that could provide a rational basis for the statute.” F.C.C. v. Beach

Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314 (1993) (emphasis supplied).41

 

Statutes affecting only economic or business interests normally pass

constitutional muster because the Supreme Court “presumes that even improvident

decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic processes.” Cleburne v.

Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 440 (1985). This presumption of the selfrectifying nature of the democratic process is a theme that will be revisited in Part

Four (Section B) of this opinion, in connection with the discussion of Lawrence v.

Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), and its implications for the issue on remand. 

2. Strict Scrutiny

On the other hand, if the challenged statute burdens a person’s exercise of

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42 See supra note 39.

43 See, e.g., Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 155 (1973) (“Where certain ‘fundamental rights’ are

involved, the Court has held that regulation limiting these rights may be justified only by a

‘compelling state interest,’ and that legislative enactments must be narrowly drawn to express only

the legitimate state interests at stake.”) (citations omitted). 

44 See Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 722 (“[B]y establishing a threshold requirement — that a

challenged state action implicate a fundamental right — before requiring more than a reasonable

relation to a legitimate state interest to justify the action, it avoids the need for complex balancing

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fundamental rights or employs suspect criteria to define the class of persons

benefitted or burdened by the legislation,42 then the state’s justification for the law

may be subjected to a higher standard, known as “strict scrutiny,” which requires the

legislation to be narrowly tailored to the achievement of a compelling governmental

interest.43 The phrase “may be” in the preceding sentence is emphasized because

strict scrutiny does not follow automatically from the mere assertion that a law

infringes or burdens fundamental rights. Instead, the court must engage in two

inquiries. The first question is whether the right implicated by the statute is

“fundamental” — an inquiry that comprises two requirements: (i) “a careful

description of the asserted fundamental liberty interest,” Washington v. Glucksberg,

521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted); and (ii) a determination

of whether the right as thus described is among “those fundamental rights and

liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,

and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice

would exist if they were sacrificed.” Id. at 720-21.44 If the initial inquiry is answered

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 14 of 56
of competing interests in every case.”). 

45 There exists a third level of scrutiny between those discussed above — hence, the term

“intermediate scrutiny” — that is employed when the challenged statute involves gender or

illegitimacy classifications. See, e.g., Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976) (“To withstand

constitutional challenge, previous cases establish that classification by gender must serve important

governmental objectives and must be substantially related to those objectives.”). See generally 3

Ronald D. Rotunda & John E. Nowak, Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure

§ 18.3, at 218-26 (3d ed. 1999). 

-15-

affirmatively, then the statute is subjected to strict scrutiny, which requires that three

questions be answered: (a) What is the governmental interest or purpose the statute

seeks to promote or achieve?; (b) Is that interest “compelling”?; and (c) Is the statute

narrowly tailored to the achievement of that interest? 

“Most statutes reviewed under the very stringent strict scrutiny standard are

found to be unconstitutional.” Williams II, 240 F.3d at 948. Even so, the application

of the strict scrutiny standard of review “is not inevitably fatal in fact” to the

constitutionality of a statute. United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 532 n.6

(1996).45

 

PART THREE

Procedural History

A. The First District Court Opinion — “Williams I”

This court’s original opinion rejected plaintiffs’ argument that the Supreme

Court’s line of decisions recognizing, in certain contexts, a person’s fundamental

right to privacy or personal autonomy was “broad enough to encompass an

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 15 of 56
46 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1274 (quoting plaintiffs’ brief) (emphasis in original).

47 See supra note 2 (reciting the text of Ala. Code § 13A-12-200.2(a)(1)).

48 Moreover, statutes regulating ordinary economic and commercial activities in the

distribution, sale, and purchase of consumer products are subject only to rational basis scrutiny. See,

e.g., Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 314 (“In areas of social and economic policy, . . . any

reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the” statute is sufficient

to sustain its constitutionality); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 489

(1955). 

-16-

individual’s decision to engage in private sexual activity not proscribed by law” (i.e.,

to use sexual devices)46 and, accordingly, did not subject the contested statute to

“strict scrutiny.” The reasons for not doing so are addressed below. 

1. Fundamental Rights Analysis

The contested Alabama statute forbids only the sale of sexual devices — not

their possession or use.

47 Nevertheless, this court focused upon “use” of the devices,

saying: “[T]o resolve the issues raised by plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental

right,’ this court must focus on the use of the proscribed devices, rather than their

distribution because, if the use of such devices is a fundamental liberty interest, as

plaintiffs contend, then the legislature’s ban on distribution compels strict judicial

scrutiny.” Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1281 (emphasis supplied).48 Cf. Carey v.

Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 687-88 (1977) (“Restrictions on the

distribution of contraceptives clearly burden the freedom to make [protected

childbearing] decisions. A total prohibition against sale of contraceptives, for

example, would intrude upon individual decisions in matters of procreation and

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 16 of 56
49 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1275 (footnote omitted) (emphasis supplied). 

50 Id. at 1283 (footnote omitted). 

-17-

contraception as harshly as a direct ban on their use.”). 

Therefore, taking into account the Supreme Court’s observation in Carey,

supra — “A total prohibition against sale of [sexual devices] would intrude upon

individual decisions [concerning the use of such devices in profoundly personal

activities] as harshly as a direct ban on their use” — this court framed the question

for decision as: “whether the concept of a constitutionally protected ‘right to privacy’

protects an individual’s liberty to use [sexual devices] when engaging in lawful,

private, sexual activity”?49

 

Ultimately, however, this court did not subject the Alabama statute to a “strict

scrutiny” standard of review, because “nothing presented to this court in brief or

during oral argument suggest[ed] that use of sexual devices ha[d] monumental or

abiding approval.”50 That major premise of the first opinion was not well stated; it

would have been better framed as follows: even though this court recognized that a

total ban on the distribution of sexual devices burdened the use of such devices as

harshly as a direct ban upon their use, plaintiffs then had not presented an evidentiary

basis for concluding that their asserted rights to sell, purchase, possess, and use

sexual devices were among “those fundamental rights and liberties which are,

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 17 of 56
51 This court expanded upon plaintiffs’ failure to meet the Glucksberg standards for strict

scrutiny review in the following marginal note: 

Certain submissions to the court, and certain facts that were stipulated,

establish that some level of popularity in the use of sexual devices has evolved over

the past twenty years. For example, several publications and websites discuss or

suggest the use of these devices in aid of achieving orgasm. The parties also have

stipulated that these devices possess some therapeutic value (or at least that plaintiffs

and certain experts in human sexuality believe they do). 

Evidence of recent popularity notwithstanding, the most persuasive evidence

supporting an argument that use of these devices can satisfy theGlucksberg standards

is the fact that the federal Food and Drug Administration promulgated regulations

concerning some of the more common sexual devices, establishing standardsfortheir

therapeutic use. 

The FDA first established such regulations in 1980. See 45 Fed.Reg.

12684-12720 (1980);see also Postscript Enterprises, Inc. v. Whaley, 658 F.2d 1249,

1254 n.6 (8th Cir. 1981). 

The twenty years of regulation proves to be the most persuasive evidence

before the court, largely because it is the most longstanding. 

In fact, aside from references to two publications, it is the only stipulation or

evidentiary submission dating from an earlier decade. The court also notes that

neither of the vendor plaintiffs has operated her relevant business (at least in

Alabama) for more than six years.

Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1283 n.33. Stated differently, plaintiffs then had presented evidence

dating back only two decades or so — a period that hardly seemed sufficient to satisfy the

Glucksberg standard of being “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” 

-18-

objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, . . . and implicit in

the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they

were sacrificed.” Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720-21.51

 

2. Rational Basis Review

Accordingly, this court engaged in rational basis review of the statute, and held

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 18 of 56
52 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1293. See also id. at 1274 (“If legislation does not burden a

fundamental right, . . . then the act faces only minimal scrutiny: that is, a ‘rational basis’ standard.

When reviewing legislation under a rational basis test, courts ensure only that a legitimate

governmental interest supports the legislation, and, that the resulting law bears a rational relation to

that interest.”) (citing Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. at 2271; Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302-05 (1993)).

53 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1285. 

54 Id. at 1286.

55 Id. at 1288. 

-19-

it unconstitutional, but on the narrow ground that broadly prohibiting the sale of all

sexual devices, regardless of the many beneficial uses acknowledged by the State of

Alabama, was not rationally related to any legitimate state interest.52 In reaching that

conclusion, this court considered and rejected a number of possible justifications.

The first state interest considered was the protection of children and unwilling

adults from exposure to public displays of obscene materials.

53 This court tied that

interest to public notions of morality,54 but found that the statutory prohibition was

“absolutely arbitrary,” because “[i]nnumerable measures far short of an absolute ban

on the distribution of sexual devices would accomplish the State’s goals.”55 This

court also held that any interest in protecting children and unwilling adults had no

application to one of the vendor plaintiffs, who sells sexual devices in private homes

during “Tupperware-style” parties attended only by consenting adults. Finally, this

court held that storefront vendors could easily adapt their window displays (as had

vendor plaintiff Sherri Williams) to accommodate the State’s concerns for the

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 19 of 56
56 This court’s second opinion, discussed infra, also observed that the State is constitutionally

permitted to employ its zoning powers to restrict businesses to locations out of reach and view of

children and unwilling adults. Williams III, 220 F. Supp. 2d at 1305.

57 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1288.

58 Id. at 1286.

59 The Attorney General asserted in his brief that “[t]he commerce in sexual stimulation and

auto-eroticism, for its own sake, unrelated to marriage, procreation or familial relationships is an

evil, an obscenity . . . detrimental to the health and morality of the state.” Id. (footnote omitted).

60 Id. at 1287.

61 See id. at 1288-90.

62 Id. at 1289.

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decency of public displays.

56 For these reasons, this court concluded that the statute

failed rational basis review if premised upon the interest in public decency, because

the breadth of the ordinance was so far removed from the particular justification.57

The second possible objective considered — characterized as “banning

commerce in sexual stimulation and auto-eroticism, for its own sake, unrelated to

marriage, procreation or familial relationships”58 — also was tied to the State’s

interest in notions of social morality.59 Although this court accepted that as a

legitimate state interest,60 it did not find a rational relationship between the statute and

the objective.61 Instead, the statute accomplishes just the opposite for the user

plaintiffs, because it prevents them from access to devices “that they, and experts in

the field of human sexuality, have averred are integral to growing, preserving, and/or

repairing marital and familial relationships.”62

This court also found that the statute swept too broadly with respect to another,

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 20 of 56
63 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1290-93.

64 Black’s Law Dictionary 1263 (8th ed. 2004).

65 Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1292-93.

66 Id. at 1293.

-21-

conceivable state interest: banning commerce in “obscene” materials.

63 It first was

noted that many of the devices at issue do not represent human genitals, and would

not be considered “obscene” under the guidelines of Miller v. California, 413 U.S.

15 (1973). Moreover, even though some of the devices might appeal to “prurient

interests” — one definition of which is “characterized by or arousing inordinate or

unusual sexual desire”64 — this court concluded that “a majority, or at least a

significant minority, of the proscribed devices, as a matter of law, are not obscene

under any established definition of obscenity.”65

Accordingly, this court granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment,

denied the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, and entered judgment

enjoining the Attorney General from enforcing the statutory provision.66

B. The First Eleventh Circuit Opinion — “Williams II”

The Eleventh Circuit reviewing panel held that this court erred when

concluding that the Alabama statute’s absolute ban on the sale of sexual devices was

not rationally related to a proper governmental purpose. 

We conclude the district court erred in determining the statute

lacks a rational basis. The State’s interest in public morality is a

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 21 of 56
67 Williams II, 240 F.3d at 949-50 (some citations and footnote omitted) (emphasis supplied).

-22-

legitimate interest rationally served by the statute. The crafting and

safeguarding of public morality has long been an established part of the

States’ plenary police power to legislate and indisputably is a legitimate

government interest under rational basis scrutiny. See, e.g., Barnes v.

Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560, 569 (1991) (citing Bowers v.

Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 196 (1986); Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton,

413 U.S. 49, 61 (1973); Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957)). A

statute banning the commercial distribution of sexual devices is

rationally related to this interest. Alabama argues “a ban on the sale of

sexual devices and related orgasm stimulating paraphernalia is rationally

related to a legitimate legislative interest in discouraging prurient

interests in autonomous sex” and that “it is enough for a legislature to

reasonably believe that commerce in the pursuit of orgasms by artificial

means for their own sake is detrimental to the health and morality of the

State.” Appellant’s Brief at 13, 16. The criminal proscription on the

distribution of sexual devices certainly is a rational means for

eliminating commerce in the devices, which itself is a rational means for

making the acquisition and use of the devices more difficult. Moreover,

incremental steps are not a defect in legislation under rational basis

scrutiny, so Alabama did not act irrationally by prohibiting only the

commercial distribution of sexual devices, rather than prohibiting their

possession or use or by directly proscribing masturbation with or

without a sexual device. Thus, we hold the Alabama sexual devices

distribution criminal statute is constitutional under rational basis

scrutiny because it is rationally related to at least one legitimate State

interest.67 

The panel emphasized its conclusion that Alabama’s interest in public morality was

a legitimate, governmental interest rationally served by the statute with this footnoted

observation: 

In fact, the State’s interest in public morality is sufficiently

substantial to satisfy the government’s burden under the more rigorous

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 22 of 56
68 Id. at 949 n.3.

69 Id. at 952-53.

70 Id. at 953 (emphasis in original) (quoting Gulf Power Co. v. United States, 187 F.3d 1324,

1328 (11th Cir. 1999) (in turn quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987)). See also,

e.g., United States v. Frandsen, 212 F.3d 1231, 1235 (11th Cir. 2000) (stating that “no set of

circumstances” is the general rule for evaluating facial challenges in this circuit); Jacobs v. Florida

Bar, 50 F.3d 901, 906 n.20 (11th Cir. 1995) (“[W]hen a plaintiff attacks a law facially, the plaintiff

bears the burden of proving that the law could never be constitutionally applied.”) (citing New York

State Club Ass’n, Inc. v. City of New York, 487 U.S. 1, 11 (1988)).

71 Williams II, 240 F.3d at 953. 

72 Id. (emphasis supplied).

-23-

intermediate level of constitutional scrutiny applicable in some cases.

See, e.g., City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. 277, 120 S.Ct. 1382,

1395-97 (2000); Barnes, 501 U.S. at 569. For purposes of consistency

in this case, however, we will refer to the interest as legitimate.68

The panel then turned its attention to plaintiffs’ fundamental rights arguments,

and noted that plaintiffs had “challenged the constitutionality of the statute on its face

and as applied.”69 

1. Facial Challenge

With regard to the facial challenge, the panel observed that it is a very high

hurdle indeed, because such an attack required plaintiffs to “establish that no set of

circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.”70 “Unless the statute is

unconstitutional in all its applications, an as-applied challenge must be used to attack

its constitutionality.”71 

The panel then addressed the question of “how to frame the nature and scope

of a constitutional right that would facially invalidate the Alabama statute,”72 and

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 23 of 56
-24-

concluded that this court had correctly framed the fundamental rights analysis: 

The district court narrowly framed the analysis as the question “whether

the concept of a constitutionally protected ‘right to privacy’ protects an

individual’s liberty to use [sexual devices] when engaging in lawful,

private, sexual activity.” 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1275; see also id. at 1281 &

n. 30. For purposes of the facial challenge, the right is more precisely

stated as whether the Constitution protects such liberty of every

individual. 

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Carey v. Population

Services International, 431 U.S. 678 (1977), we conclude the district

court correctly framed the fundamental rights analysis in this case. 

Following its decisions holding [that] a state may not criminalize every

sale or distribution of contraceptives, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381

U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), the Supreme

Court struck down a narrower New York law criminalizing the sale of

contraceptives to persons under 16 years of age and the sale of

contraceptives by non-pharmacists. See Carey, 431 U.S. at 681-82. The

Court explained that: 

[T]he Constitution protects individual decisions in matters of

childbearing from unjustified intrusion by the State. Restrictions

on the distribution of contraceptives clearly burden the freedom

to make such decisions. . . . This is so not because there is an

independent fundamental “right of access to contraceptives,” but

because such access is essential to exercise of the constitutionally

protected right of decision in matters of childbearing that is the

underlying foundation of the holdings in Griswold, Eisenstadt v.

Baird, and Roe v. Wade. 

431 U.S. at 687-89; see also id. at 689-91 (concluding that New York

law fails strict scrutiny for lack of compelling state interest). Similarly,

because the [Alabama] statute prohibiting the distribution of sexual

devices would burden an individual’s ability to use the devices, the

analysis in this case must be framed not in terms of whether the

Constitution protects a right to sell or buy sexual devices, but rather in

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 24 of 56
73 Id. at 953-54 (emphasis supplied).

74 Id. at 954 (emphasis supplied) (footnote omitted).

75 Id. (emphasis supplied). 

-25-

terms of whether there is a fundamental constitutional interest — broad

or narrow — that encompasses a right to use sexual devices and

invalidates this statute on its face.73 

The panel then concluded there was “no controlling precedent that specifically

establishes the facial unconstitutionality of this statute.”74

 

The fundamental constitutional rights of privacy recognized to date by

the Supreme Court in the area of sexual activity each have followed

from the Court’s protection of a person’s right to make the decision not

to procreate without governmental interference. Specifically, the Court

has repeatedly sustained a right to prevent pregnancy through the use

of contraceptives, see Griswold, 381 U.S. at 479; Eisenstadt, 405 U.S.

at 438; Carey, 431 U.S. at 678, as well as a woman’s qualified right to

terminate a pregnancy, see, e.g., Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505

U.S. 833 (1992); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). More than half a

century ago, the Court also protected the right to procreate, invalidating

a state’s provision for involuntary sterilization of habitual criminals.

See Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942). The Court also has

recognized other fundamental rights, including rights of privacy

unrelated to sexual activity, that protect personal autonomy from

governmental intrusion. See, e.g., Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep’t

of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990) (sustaining right to refuse medical

treatment); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) (invalidating ban on

interracial marriage). None of these cases, however, is decisive on the

question whether the Constitution protects every individual’s right to

private sexual activity and use of sexual devices from being burdened

by Alabama’s sexual device distribution criminal statute.

75

 

The panel then addressed the question of whether it might, “in this case,

recognize an extension of the right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 25 of 56
76 Id. (citations, internal quotation marks, and bracketed alteration omitted).

77 Williams II, 240 F.3d. at 954-55.

78 Id. at 955 (emphasis supplied). 

-26-

recognized as fundamental in certain contexts, that is broad enough to facially

invalidate the Alabama statute,”

76 but concluded that some binding authorities

suggested the statute had possible constitutional applications and, therefore, was not

facially unconstitutional. 

This circuit has recognized that a state may regulate materials deemed

harmful to minors. See American Booksellers v. Webb, 919 F.2d 1493,

1500-01 (11th Cir. 1990); see also Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629

(1968) (state may constitutionally regulate well-being of minors, and

within this power to regulate is the power to restrict access to materials

rationally deemed to be harmful to minors). Application of Alabama’s

statute to those who sell sexual devices to minors, to such extent that

those devices are deemed harmful to minors, would not violate any

fundamental right. The statute has possible constitutional applications

and therefore is not facially unconstitutional. The district court correctly

rejected the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the statute.77

 

2. As-Applied Challenge

The panel then considered plaintiffs’ challenges to the constitutionality of the

statute “as applied,” and concluded this court had “failed to specifically consider the

as-applied challenges raised by the four ‘user’ plaintiffs” — challenges the panel

described as “implicat[ing] important interests in sexual privacy.”78 

The district court failed to specifically consider the as-applied

challenges raised by the four “user” plaintiffs. Betty Faye Haggermaker

and Alice Jean Cope are married women who use sexual devices with

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 26 of 56
79 Id. (emphasis supplied).

-27-

their husbands. See 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1264. Sherry Taylor-Williams

and Jane Doe began using sexual devices in marital intimacy but both

are now single. See id. at 1264-65. Although the statute is not facially

unconstitutional because, in light of Webb and Ginsberg, it may

constitutionally be applied to those who sell to minors sexual devices

which are deemed harmful to minors, the as-applied challenges raised

by the plaintiffs, married or unmarried, implicate different and

important interests in sexual privacy. See Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485-86

(“Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital

bedrooms? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy

surrounding the marriage relationship.”); Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720

(citingGriswold as holding the Constitution protects a fundamentalright

“to marital privacy”); see also Casey, 505 U.S. at 898 (invalidating

provision requiring notification of married woman’s spouse before

abortion could be performed because “[w]omen do not lose their

constitutionally protected liberty when they marry. The Constitution

protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the

abuse of governmental power, even where that power is employed for

the supposed benefit of a member of the individual’s family”);

Eisenstadt, 405 U.S. at 453 (“[T]he rights of the individual to [have]

access to contraceptives . . . must be the same for the unmarried and

married alike.”); Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 209 n. 4 (1986)

(Blackmun, J., dissenting) (questioning validity of categorizations of

sexual activity depending on marital status); id. at 216 (Stevens, J.,

dissenting) (citing Eisenstadt and Carey as holding that fundamental

rights protection in sexual matters “extends to intimate choices by

unmarried as well as married persons”).79 

The panel accordingly remanded the case for reconsideration, and gave these

instructions: 

We remand the as-applied challenges for due consideration by the

district court because the record and stipulations in this case simply are

too narrow to permit us to decide whether or to what extent the Alabama

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 27 of 56
80 Id. at 955-56 (emphasis supplied). 

81 The five persons added as “user plaintiffs” were: Deborah and Benny Cooper, a married

couple who began using sexual devices in an attempt to repair their deteriorating sexual relationship

and marriage; Dan Bailey (a 61-year-old male who suffered from a respiratory condition that caused

erectile dysfunction); Jane Poe (a 24-year-old married woman who had difficulty achieving orgasm);

and Jane Roe (a 38-year-old single woman who suffered from a chronic disability that made sexual

-28-

statute infringes a fundamental right to sexual privacy of the specific

plaintiffs in this case. In Glucksberg, its most recent case in which an

argument for recognition of a new fundamental right was presented, the

Supreme Court instructed that a fundamental right must be “objectively,

deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the

concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would

exist if [the right] were sacrificed.” 521 U.S. at 720-21 (citations and

quotations omitted). In concluding the Constitution did not include such

a fundamental right of physician-assisted suicide, the Court discussed

at length not only the long history of the proscription of suicide and

assisting suicide but also the considerable contemporary nationwide

legislative action to preserve such laws. See id. at 710-19. By contrast,

in this case the district court considered in two paragraphs only whether

the “use of sexual devices” is a deeply rooted and central liberty. See 41

F.Supp.2d at 1283-84 & n. 33. The court analyzed neither whether our

nation has a deeply rooted history of state interference, or state

non-interference, in the private sexual activity of married or unmarried

persons nor whether contemporary practice bolsters or undermines any

such history. The record is bare of evidence on these important

questions. Absent the kind of careful consideration the Supreme Court

performed in Glucksberg, we are unwilling to decide the as-applied

fundamental rights analysis and accordingly remand those claims to the

district court.80 

C. The Second District Court Opinion — “Williams III”

Following receipt of the Eleventh Circuit’s mandate and resumption of

proceedings in this court, plaintiffs amended their complaint to add five persons who

used sexual devices,81 and who alleged that Alabama’s ban on distribution of such

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 28 of 56
intercourse extremely painful). See Williams III, 220 F. Supp. 2d at 1260, 1265-66. Further, the

claims of two of the four “user plaintiffs” before this court and the Eleventh Circuit during the

original round of proceedings (see the quoted text accompanying note 79 supra) were dismissed.

Id. at 1261. Thus, a net total of seven user plaintiffs were before this court on remand. 

82 Williams III, 220 F. Supp. 2d at 1261 (quoting plaintiffs’ amended complaint).

83 See Williams I, 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1261-73.

84 See Williams III, 220 F. Supp. 2d at 1261 passim (the evidentiary materials submitted

following remand are discussed throughout the remainder of the opinion).

-29-

items

intruded into the most intimate of places — the bedrooms of its citizens

— and the lawful sexual conduct that occurs therein. While the statute’s

reach does not directly proscribe the sexual conduct in question, it

places — without justification — a substantial and undue burden on the

ability of the plaintiffs to obtain devices regulated by the statute. By

restricting sales of these devices to plaintiffs, Alabama has acted in

violation of the fundamental rights of privacy and personal autonomy

that protect an individual’s lawful sexual practices guaranteed by the

First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United

States Constitution.82 

The parties also supplemented the lengthy stipulation of facts filed in connection with

the original proceedings in this court83 with an extensive evidentiary record bearing

upon the plaintiffs’ as-applied challenge.84 

After considering the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment and the

evidence presented, this court held that plaintiffs possess a fundamental right to

sexual privacy:

[P]laintiffs have met their burden of showing that there is a “history,

legal tradition, and practice” in this country of deliberate state noninterference with private sexual relationships between married couples,

and a contemporary practice of the same between unmarried persons.

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 29 of 56
85 Id. at 1296.

-30-

Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 710, 117 S. Ct. at 2262. Unlike Bowers and

Glucksberg, where proponents of the offending statutes were able to

demonstrate a long history, tradition, and contemporary practice,

respectively, of prohibiting sodomy (albeit, generally in the context of

homosexual relationships) and suicide, respectively, plaintiffs’ evidence

establishes that there exists a constitutionally inherent right to sexual

privacy that firmly encompasses state non-interference with private,

adult, consensual relationships. See Williams [II], 240 F.3d at 954, 955

(characterizing plaintiffs’ right at issue as one of “sexual privacy”); see

also Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 710-19, 117 S. Ct. at 2262-67;Bowers, 478

U.S. at 192-94, 106 S. Ct. at 2844-46. The court notes that this right to

sexual privacy cannot be limited to a mere right to “sex,” when the

decisions of the Supreme Court protecting abortion, contraception, and

the right to privacy in our bodies are considered.

Williams v. Pryor, 220 F. Supp. 2d 1257, 1295-96 (N.D. Ala. 2002) (“Williams III”)

(emphasis supplied). This court further held that plaintiffs’ right to sexual privacy

encompasses the right to use sexual devices, based on “[t]he fact that history and

contemporary practice demonstrate a conscious avoidance of regulation of these

devices by the states, along with the fact that such devices are used in the

performance of deeply private sexual acts . . . .”85 

This court also concluded that the Alabama law prohibiting the sale of sexual

devices infringes plaintiffs’ fundamental right to sexual privacy because it “imposes

a significant burden on the right of married and unmarried persons to sexual privacy,

in that it severely limits their ability to access, and thus to use, sexual devices within

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 30 of 56
86 Id. at 1298.

87 Id. at 1299-1307.

88 Id. at 1307.

89 Justice Kennedy explicated the factual similarities and statutory distinction between

Bowers and Lawrence in his majority opinion:

The facts in Bowers had some similarities to the instant case. A police

officer, whose right to enter seems not to have been in question, observed Hardwick,

in his own bedroom, engaging in intimate sexual conduct with another adult male.

The conduct was in violation of a Georgia statute making it a criminal offense to

engage in sodomy. One difference between the two cases is that the Georgia statute

prohibited the conduct whether or not the participants were of the same sex, while

the Texas statute . . . applies only to participants of the same sex. Hardwick was not

prosecuted, but he brought an action in federal court to declare the state statute

invalid. He alleged he was a practicing homosexual and that the criminal prohibition

violated rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution. The Court, in an opinion by

Justice White, sustained the Georgia law. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Powell

-31-

their sexual relationships.”86 Finally, this court held that violation of plaintiffs’

fundamental right of privacy was not justified by a compelling governmental interest

which the statute was narrowly tailored to achieve.87

 Accordingly, this court again

ruled in favor of plaintiffs, finding the statute unconstitutional and entering a second

order enjoining its enforcement.88

 

D. Lawrence v. Texas

Eight months after this court’s opinion in Williams III, and thirteen months

before the second Eleventh Circuit reviewing panel’s majority decision in Williams

IV, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558

(2003). The facts of the case bore some similarities to those of Bowers v. Hardwick,

478 U.S. 186 (1986),89 a precedent that Lawrence expressly overruled.90 Police

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joined the opinion of the Court and filed separate, concurring opinions. Four Justices

dissented. 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 566 (emphasis supplied) (citations omitted).

90 See 539 U.S. at 578 (“Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct

today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is

overruled.”).

91 Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court was joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg,

and Breyer. See Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 561-62. Justice O’Connor filed an opinion concurring in the

judgment. Id. at 579. Justice Scalia filed a dissenting opinion, in which Chief Justice Rehnquist and

Justice Thomas joined. Id. at 586. Justice Thomas also filed a separate dissenting opinion. Id. at

605.

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officers in Houston, Texas, were dispatched to a private residence in response to a

reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment occupied by John Geddes

Lawrence. On entering, they did not see any weapons, but they did see Lawrence

engaging in a sexual act with Tyron Garner. Lawrence and Garner were arrested,

held in custody over night, charged, and convicted of “deviate sexual intercourse,

namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man).” Each man was fined $200

and assessed court costs. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 562-63. Both men appealed and, in

the majority opinion authored by Justice Kennedy,91 the Supreme Court held that

petitioners’ convictions for “adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home,” and the

Texas statute on which those convictions were based, violated the petitioners’ “vital

interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment.” Id. at 564 (describing questions on which certiorari was granted). 

Specifically, Lawrence held that state governments have no legitimate interests

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justifying criminal statutes that intrude upon non-commercial, sexual practices

common to a homosexual lifestyle when the acts are performed in private by two

consenting adults, neither of whom is a person who might be injured or coerced, or

is situated in a relationship in which consent might not easily be refused (e.g., neither

of the participants is mentally or physically incompetent, nor related to the other

within a degree of consanguinity that would constitute incest). 

The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve

persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in

relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not

involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the

government must give formal recognition to any relationship that

homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults

who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual

practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled

to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their

existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct

a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them

the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the

government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of

personal liberty which the government may not enter.” The Texas

statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion

into the personal and private life of the individual. 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 578 (quoting Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v.

Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 847 (1992)).

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion is written in prose that is “easy to read, but

Case 5:98-cv-01938-CLS Document 119 Filed 03/15/06 Page 33 of 56
92 Nan D. Hunter, Living With Lawrence, 88 Minn. L. Rev. 1103 (2004). See also Lawrence

H. Tribe, Lawrence v. Texas: The “Fundamental Right” That Dare Not Speak Its Name, 117 Harv.

L. Rev. 1893 (2004).

93 See, e.g., Tribe, id. at 1895 (comparing Lawrence to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe

v. Wade, “the only two decisions since 1937 that seem remotely comparable to Lawrence in their

cultural significance.”); Erwin Chemerinsky, October Term 2002, 6 Green Bag 367, 370 (2003)

(“Lawrence, more than any other case in American History, recognizes that sexual activity is a

fundamental aspect of personhood and that it is entitled to constitutional protection. . . . Lawrence

is the most important decision to date recognizing the rights of gays and lesbians to equal dignity and

equal treatment under the Constitution.”).

94

 Cass R. Sunstein, What Did Lawrence Hold? Of Autonomy, Desuetude, Sexuality, and

Marriage, 2003 Sup. Ct. Rev. 27, 60.

95 Id. The difficulties in deciphering Lawrence were summarized by Eleventh Circuit Judge

Stanley Birch in his majority opinion in Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1235-38 (concluding that Lawrence

“clearly established the unconstitutionality of criminal prohibitions on consensual adult sodomy,”

but did not “announce a new fundamental right” to sexual privacy “or, more broadly, to all forms

of sexual intimacy”), and his opinion for the Court in Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of

Children and Family Services, 358 F.3d 804, 815-17 (11th Cir. 2004) (affirming the constitutionality

of a Florida statute prohibiting adoption by homosexual persons “who are known to engage in

current, voluntary homosexual activity” against both due process and equal protection challenges,

and holding that Lawrence did not recognize a “new fundamental right to private sexual intimacy”).

Essentially, Judge Birch noted that the “language and reasoning” of Lawrence is “inconsistent with

standard fundamental-rights analysis,” and lacks the “two primary features” of fundamental-rights

analysis under the Due Process Clause:

First, the Lawrence opinion contains virtually no inquiry into the question of whether

the petitioners’ asserted right is one of “those fundamental rights and liberties which

are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition and implicit in

the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they

were sacrificed.” Second, the opinion notably never provides the “‘careful

description’ of the asserted fundamental liberty interest” that is to accompany

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difficult to pin down.”92

 Lawrence may well prove to be an important case,93 with

“broad consequences for regulation of sexual relationships, in a way that vindicates

a quite general interest in sexual autonomy.”94 On the other hand, it may just be “a

sport, a decision with no descendants, one in which the Court struck down a law that

shocked its conscience but that proved unable to generate further doctrine.”95

 

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fundamental-rights analysis. Rather, the constitutional liberty interests on which the

Court relied were invoked, not with “careful description,” but with sweeping

generality. Most significant, however, is the fact that the Lawrence Court never

applied strict scrutiny, the proper standard when fundamental rights are implicated,

but instead invalidated the Texas statute on rational-basis grounds, holding that it

“furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal

and private life of the individual.” 

Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1236 n.6 (quoting Lofton, 358 F.3d at 816).

96 The initial reviewing panel was comprised of then Chief Judge R. Lanier Anderson, and

Circuit Judges Susan H. Black and Cynthia Holcomb Hall (U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit,

sitting by designation). The second reviewing panel was comprised of Circuit Judges Stanley F.

Birch, Jr., and Rosemary Barkett, and Senior Circuit Judge James C. Hill. 

97 Judge Hill joined in the majority opinion authored by Judge Birch.

98 Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1238. The majority opinion also cited the decision in Lofton v.

Sec. of Dept. of Children and Family Services, 358 F.3d 804 (11th Cir. 2004), to support the

proposition that Lawrence did not recognize a fundamental right to sexual privacy. 

The Supreme Court’s most recent opportunity to recognize a fundamental

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E. The Second Eleventh Circuit Opinion — “Williams IV”

On appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, this court’s second opinion was assigned to

an entirely different panel.96 Two members of that panel reversed and remanded the

case. See Williams v. Pryor, 378 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2004) (“Williams IV”), cert.

denied, 125 S. Ct. 1335 (2005).97 The majority first held that the Supreme Court’s

intervening decision in Lawrence v. Texas did not recognize a fundamental right to

sexual privacy: 

[W]e decline to extrapolate from Lawrence and its dicta a right to sexual

privacy triggering strict scrutiny. To do so would be to impose a

fundamental-rights interpretation on a decision that rested on rationalbasis grounds, that never engaged in Glucksberg analysis, and that never

invoked strict scrutiny.98 

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right to sexual privacy came in Lawrence v. Texas, where petitioners and amici

expressly invited the court to do so. That the Lawrence Court had declined the

invitation was this court’s conclusion in our recent decision in Lofton v. Sec. of Dept.

of Children and Family Servs., 358 F.3d 804, 815-16 (11th Cir. 2004). In Lofton, we

addressed in some detail the “question of whether Lawrence identified a new

fundamental right to private sexual intimacy.” Id. at 815. We concluded that,

although Lawrence clearlyestablished the unconstitutionality of criminal prohibitions

on consensual adult sodomy, “it is a strained and ultimately incorrect reading of

Lawrence to interpret it to announce a new fundamental right” — whether to

homosexual sodomy specifically, or, more broadly, to all forms of sexual intimacy.

Id. at 817. We noted in particular that the Lawrence opinion did not employ

fundamental-rights analysis and that it ultimately applied rational-basis review, rather

than strict scrutiny, to the challenged statute. Id. at 816-17.

Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1236 (footnotes omitted).

99 Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1239 (quoting Williams II, 240 F.3d at 953).

100 Id.

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The majority also criticized this court for defining plaintiffs’ alleged

fundamental right too broadly. The majority agreed that this court had correctly

framed the issue in Williams I as being “‘whether the concept of a constitutionally

protected right to privacy protects an individual’s liberty to use sexual devices when

engaging in lawful, private, sexual activity.’”99 However, the majority sharply

criticized this court’s Williams III opinion for “abandon[ing]” its prior formulation

of the issue to instead “characterize[] the asserted right more broadly as a generalized

‘right to sexual privacy.’”100

 According to the majority, this court’s opinion in

Williams III “did little to define [the] scope and bounds” of the right in question, such

that the right “would theoretically encompass such activities as prostitution,

obscenity, and adult incest — even if we were to limit the right to consenting

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101 Id. at 1241.

102 Id. at 1242. The dissenting opinion described the majority’s analysis as “demeaning and

dismissive.” Id. at 1250 (Barkett, J., dissenting). This court does not enjoy a similar privilege of

characterization. Nevertheless, it does seem somewhat unfair to be chastised for attempting to

comply with what this court perceived to be the instructions of the first Eleventh Circuit reviewing

panel. 

For example, the Williams IV panel said that this court “failed to exercise . . . ‘utmost care’”

in defining the scope of the fundamental right at issue. Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1239. However,

this court did exercise “utmost care” to follow the directive of the first appellate reviewing panel.

Although the first panel agreed with this court’s narrow framing of the alleged right in Williams I,

it also referred to the right in question as the “right to private sexual activity and use of sexual

devices,” Williams II, 240 F.3d at 954, a right involving “important interests in sexual privacy,” and

the “fundamental right to sexual privacy.” Id. at 955. The last characterization listed can be found

within the Eleventh Circuit’s instructions for this court on remand.

We remand the as-applied challenges for due consideration by the district

court because the record and stipulations in this case simply are too narrow to permit

us to decide whether or to what extent the Alabama statute infringes a fundamental

right to sexual privacy of the specific plaintiffs in this case.

Id. (emphasis supplied). 

The second Eleventh Circuit panel recognized that following the first panel’s instructions

may have taken this court down a path with which the second panel later disagreed. 

Although our Williams II opinion indicated from the outset that the district

court’s initial narrow framing of the right was the proper approach, 240 F.3d at 953,

we note that it created a degree of ambiguity by making a subsequent shorthand

reference to this right as a “fundamental right to sexual privacy,” id. at 955. It

appears that this imprecision in our language was, at least in part, the source of the

district court’s over-broad framing of the right on remand. 

Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1232. Despite this recognition, the Williams IV panel’s criticism was no

less harsh. This lowly court can only hope that it has not again so woefully misconstrued the

Eleventh Circuit’s directives. 

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adults.”101 The Williams IV majority refused to accept this characterization of the

issue, and held instead that the right in question was the “right to use [sexual]

devices.”102

 

The panel also castigated this court for concluding the alleged fundamental

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103 Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1242 (emphasis supplied).

104 Id. at 1250.

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right was “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” 

We find that the district court, in reaching this conclusion, erred

on four levels. The first error relates back to the district court’s overbroad framing of the asserted right in question. Having framed the

relevant right as a generalized “right to sexual privacy,” the district

court’s history and tradition analysis consisted largely of an irrelevant

exploration of the history of sex in America. Second, we find that this

analysis placed too much weight on contemporary practice and attitudes

with respect to sexual conduct and sexual devices. Third, rather than

look for a history and tradition of protection of the asserted right, the

district court asked whether there was a history and tradition of state

non-interference with the right. Finally, we find that the district court’s

uncritical reliance on certain expert declarations in interpreting the

historical record was flawed and that its reliance on certain putative

“concessions” was unfounded.103

The Eleventh Circuit accordingly refused to recognize any fundamental right

applicable to the plaintiffs. It reversed this court’s decision to strike down the

Alabama statute, and remanded the case to this court for further proceedings

consistent with its opinion.

104

 

PART FOUR

A. Discussion of the Issue on Remand

The Williams IV panel unanimously agreed that, following remand, this court

“may examine ‘whether our holding in Williams II that Alabama’s law has a rational

basis (e.g., public morality) remains good law now that Bowers has been overruled.’”

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Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1238 n.9 (Birch, J., majority opinion) (quoting id. at 1259

n.25) (Barkett, J., dissenting)). Several passages from Justice Kennedy’s opinion for

the Lawrence majority bear upon that question. The first is found at the beginning

of Justice Kennedy’s discussion of Bowers v. Hardwick, where he said this: 

The Court began its substantive discussion in Bowers as follows:

“The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a

fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence

invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct

illegal and have done so for a very long time.” [478 U.S.] at 190. That

statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court’s own failure to

appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in

Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct

demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean

a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to

have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to

be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular

sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more

far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human

conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home.

The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or

not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of

persons to choose without being punished as criminals. 

This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts by the

State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its

boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law

protects. It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to

enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own

private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When

sexualityfinds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person,

the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more

enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual

persons the right to make this choice. 

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Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 566-67 (emphasis supplied). In other words, if the sexual

practices common to a homosexual lifestyle proscribed by a state criminal statute are

not purchased from a prostitute (i.e., are not “commercial”), and are not performed

in public places, but instead take place “in the confines of . . . homes” between two

consenting adults, neither of whom is a person who might be injured or coerced, or

who is situated in a relationship in which consent might not easily be refused (e.g.,

is not mentally or physically incompetent, nor related to the other participant within

a degree of consanguinity that would constitute incest), then the moral views of a

governing majority may not be used “to define the meaning of the relationship or to

set its boundaries.” 

Several pages later, and while still discussing Bowers, Justice Kennedy framed

“the question before” the Court in Lawrence as being “whether the majority may use

the power of the State to enforce [its moral principles] on the whole society through

operation of the criminal law.” The context in which that statement appears was as

follows: 

It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was

making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful

voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation

has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable

behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these

are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as

ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus

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determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer

the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may

use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society

through operation of the criminal law. “Our obligation is to define the

liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 571 (quoting Casey, 505 U.S. at 850) (emphasis supplied). 

As Justice Kennedy’s discussion of Bowers neared its denouement, he quoted

approvingly from Justice Stevens’s dissenting opinion in Bowers, and stated that

Justice Stevens’s “analysis . . . should have been controlling in Bowers and should

control here.” Id. at 578. Of particular note is the fact that the quoted passage

includes this assertion: “[T]he fact that the governing majority in a State has

traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for

upholding a law prohibiting the practice.” The specific context of that statement was

as follows:

The rationale of Bowers does not withstand careful analysis. In his

dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice STEVENS came to these

conclusions: 

“Our prior cases make two propositions abundantly clear. First,

the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally

viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason

for upholding a law prohibiting the practice; neither history nor

tradition could save a law prohibiting miscegenation from

constitutional attack. Second, individual decisions by married

persons, concerning the intimacies of their physical relationship,

even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of

‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

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Amendment. Moreover, this protection extends to intimate

choices by unmarried as well as married persons.” 478 U.S., at

216 (footnotes and citations omitted). 

Justice STEVENS’ analysis, in our view, should have been

controlling in Bowers and should control here. 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577-78 (emphasis supplied). 

Finally, near the end of the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy said that the

Texas criminal statute at issue in Lawrence “further[ed] no legitimate state interest

which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.” Id.

at 578. 

In his dissenting opinion in Lawrence, Justice Scalia read the foregoing

passages as “effectively decree[ing] the end of all morals legislation”: 

I turn now to the ground on which the Court squarely rests its

holding: the contention that there is no rational basis for the law here

under attack. This proposition is so out of accord with our jurisprudence — indeed, with the jurisprudence of any society we know —

that it requires little discussion. 

The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its

citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and

unacceptable,” Bowers, [478 U.S.] at 196 — the same interest furthered

by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest,

bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state

interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas

statute, it says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its

intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,” [539 U.S.

at 578] (emphasis added). The Court embraces instead Justice

STEVENS’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that “the fact that the

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governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular

practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law

prohibiting the practice,” [539 U.S. at 577]. This effectively decrees the

end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of

majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none

of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review. 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 599 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original).

With all due respect, Justice Scalia engaged in hyperbole when arguing that

Lawrence decreed the end of “all” morals legislation. So also did Justice Stevens in

his Bowers dissent (and, by adoption, the Lawrence majority), when unequivocally

asserting that “the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed

a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law

prohibiting the practice.” Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577 (quoting Bowers, 478 U.S. at

216 (Stevens, J., dissenting)). Laws often are based upon the moral standards of

society. Indeed, if the effects of Lawrence are to be construed as broadly as Justice

Scalia suggests, virtually our entire criminal code would be invalidated, because it is

based on social conceptions of “right” and “wrong” behavior. 

Perhaps anticipating this result, the Eleventh Circuit has commented upon (but

not yet squarely addressed) the issue of the post-Lawrence viability of public morality

as a rational basis for legislation. In an opinion involving the constitutionality of a

Florida law preventing homosexual couples from adopting children, the Eleventh

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Circuit emphasized that public morality remains a constitutionally rational basis for

legislation. 

Florida also asserts that the statute is rationally related to its

interest in promoting public morality both in the context of child rearing

and in the context of determining which types of households should be

accorded legal recognition as families. Appellants respond that public

morality cannot serve as a legitimate state interest. Because of our

conclusion that Florida’s interest in promoting married-couple adoption

provides a rational basis, it is unnecessary for us to resolve the question.

We do note, however, the Supreme Court’s conclusion that there is not

only a legitimate interest, but “a substantial government interest in

protecting order and morality,” Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S.

560, 569, 111 S. Ct. 2456, 2462, 115 L. Ed. 2d 504 (1991), and its

observation that “[i]n a democratic society legislatures, not courts, are

constituted to respond to the will and consequently the moral values of

the people.” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 175, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 2926,

49 L. Ed. 2d 859 (1976) (plurality opinion) (citation omitted).

We also note that our own recent precedent has unequivocally

affirmed the furtherance of public morality as a legitimate state interest.

See, e.g., Williams v. Pryor, 240 F.3d 944, 949 (11th Cir. 2001) (“The

crafting and safeguarding of public morality has long been an

established part of the States’ plenary police power to legislate and

indisputably is a legitimate government interest under rational basis

scrutiny.”);see also id. at 949 n.3 (“In fact, the State’s interest in public

morality is sufficiently substantial to satisfy the government’s burden

under the more rigorous intermediate level of constitutional scrutiny

applicable in some cases.”).

Lofton v. Secretary of Dept. of Children and Family, 358 F.3d 804, 819 n.17 (11th

Cir. 2004) (Birch, J.) (emphasis supplied) (bracketed alterations in original). The

Williams IV majority opinion, also authored by Judge Birch, accordingly addressed

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the issue in much the same way:

[T]he Supreme Court has noted on repeated occasions that laws can be

based on moral judgments. See Barnes v. Glen Theatre, 501 U.S. 560,

569, 111 S. Ct. 2456, 2462, 115 L. Ed. 2d 504 (1991) (upholding a

public indecency statute, stating, “This and other public indecency

statutes were designed to protect morals and public order. The

traditional police power of the States is defined as the authority to

provide for the public health, safety, and morals, and we have upheld

such a basis for legislation”); id. (noting that “a legislature could

legitimately act ... to protect ‘the social interest in order and morality’)

(citation omission); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 183, 96 S. Ct.

2909, 2930, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 (1976) (plurality opinion) (upholding the

death penalty, noting that “capital punishment is an expression of

society’s moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct”); Paris Adult

Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 61, 93 S. Ct. 2628, 2637, 37 L. Ed. 2d

446 (1973) (holding that Georgia had a legitimate interest in regulating

obscene material because the legislature “could legitimately act ... to

protect ‘the social interest in order and morality’”) (quoting Roth v.

United States, 354 U.S. 476, 485, 77 S. Ct. 1304, 1309, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498

(1957)); United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 348, 92 S. Ct. 515, 522, 30

L. Ed. 2d 488 (1971) (noting that “criminal punishment usually

represents the moral condemnation of the community”). In addition, our

own recent precedent has unequivocally affirmed the furtherance of

public morality as a legitimate state interest. See, e.g., Williams v.

Pryor, 240 F.3d 944, 949 (11th Cir. 2001) (“The crafting and

safeguarding of public morality has long been an established part of the

States’ plenary police power to legislate and indisputably is a legitimate

government interest under rational basis scrutiny.”); see also id. at 949

n.3 (“In fact, the State’s interest in public morality is sufficiently

substantial to satisfy the government’s burden under the more rigorous

intermediate level of constitutional scrutiny applicable in some cases.”).

One would expect the Supreme Court to be manifestly more specific and

articulate than it was in Lawrence if now such a traditional and

significant jurisprudential principal has been jettisoned wholesale (with

all due respect to Justice Scalia’s ominous dissent notwithstanding).

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105 Another district court within this circuit has interpreted this footnote as supporting the

proposition that public morality still may serve as a rational basis for legislation. See Wilson v. Ake,

354 F. Supp. 2d 1298, 1309 (M.D. Fla. 2005) (“[D]espite Justice Scalia’s fears in Lawrence, the

Eleventh Circuit has recently reiterated that the ‘furtherance of public morality [is] a legitimate state

interest.’”) (quoting Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1238 n.8) (bracketed alterations in original).

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Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1238 n.8.105

This court agrees with the reasoning behind the foregoing passages. To hold

that public morality can never serve as a rational basis for legislation after Lawrence

would cause a “massive disruption of the current social order,” one this court is not

willing to set into motion. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 591 (Scalia, J., dissenting); see also

id. at 590 (“‘The law . . . is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws

representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process

Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.’”) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting

Bowers, 478 U.S. at 196). Thus, the court will not invalidate the Alabama law in

question here simply because it is founded on concerns over public morality. 

The more difficult question, though, is whether this case fits squarely within

the mold of Lawrence, such that Lawrence’s holding — that public morality was not

a sufficiently rational basis to support the Texas statute at issue there — applies to

strike down the Alabama law here. Answering this question requires the court to

attempt to unlock the enigma of the Lawrence decision. 

B. An Interpretation of the Holding in Lawrence v. Texas

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The majority opinion in Lawrence is susceptible of many readings, but the

interpretation that makes most sense to this court is the following one:

Lawrence is a multilayered story. Only on its surface is it a story

about removing the sanction of criminal punishment from those who

commit sodomy. Given that the criminal laws in this field have

notoriously been honored in the breach and, almost from the start, have

languished without enforcement, Lawrence quickly becomes a story

about how the very fact of criminalization, even unaccompanied by any

appreciable number of prosecutions, can cast already misunderstood or

despised individuals into grossly stereotyped roles, which become the

source and justification for treating those individuals less well than

others. The outlawed acts — visualized in ways that obscure their

similarity to what most sexually active adults themselves routinely do

— come to represent human identities, and this reductionist conflation

of ostracized identity with outlawed act in turn reinforces the vicious

cycle of distancing and stigma that preserves the equilibrium of

oppression in one of the several distinct dynamics at play in the legal

construction of social hierarchy. Lawrence is a story, too, of shifting

societal attitudes toward homosexuality, sex, and gender — a story of

cultural upheaval that is related to law roughly as the chicken is to the

proverbial egg. But, perhaps more than anything else, Lawrence is a

story of what “substantive due process,” that stubborn old oxymoron,

has meant in American life and law.

Lawrence H. Tribe, Lawrence v. Texas: The “Fundamental Right” That Dare Not

Speak Its Name, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1893, 1896-97 (2004) (footnotes omitted)

(emphasis supplied). 

That does not tell the whole story, however, because the majority opinion in

Lawrence intertwines language typically associated with “substantive due process”

analysis with the “class” focus of equal protection analysis; that is, the opinion “is

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a narrative in which due process and equal protection, far from having separate

missions and entailing different inquiries, are profoundly interlocked in a legal double

helix,” and “advance[ ] an explicitly equality-based and relationally situated theory

of substantive liberty.” Id. at 1898. See also Case Comment, Eleventh Circuit

Upholds Alabama Statute Banning Sale of Sex Toys: Williams v. Attorney General,

118 Harv. L. Rev. 802, 806-07 (2004) (“Lawrence clearly employed a substantive due

process analysis in overturning the Texas statute criminalizing homosexual sodomy.

But the Eleventh Circuit failed to recognize that the decision was also heavily driven

by equal protection principles. Indeed, Lawrence was groundbreaking not so much

because it defended liberty for its own sake, but rather because it boldly confronted

the manner in which liberty and equality intersect in society. The prominent role of

equal protection in Lawrence helps to explain Justice Kennedy’s striking focus on

human dignity and the stigma imposed by antisodomy laws. . . .”) (footnotes omitted).

In that respect, Lawrence echoes the themes of a precedent cited nowhere in

the majority opinion, but which are implicit in its conclusions. In United States v.

Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938), a post-Lochner, post-New-Deal, postcourt-packing-fight decision, the Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of a

federal statute prohibiting the interstate shipment of “filled milk” on the basis of the

rational basis test — i.e., presuming the existence of facts rationally supporting

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legislative judgments as to the appropriate means for regulating the distribution of an

important consumer product. Specifically, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s opinion for

the Court stated that “regulatory legislation affecting ordinary commercial

transactions is not to be pronounced unconstitutional unless in the light of the facts

made known or generally assumed it is of such a character as to preclude the

assumption that it rests upon some rational basis within the knowledge and

experience of the legislators.” Id. at 152 (footnote omitted) (emphasis supplied). The

omitted footnote has become known to history as “Carolene Products’ footnote four,”

and it warned that a rational relationship between a governmental interest and the

legislative means for accomplishing that purpose might not always be sufficient to

sustain the constitutionality of some statutes: 

There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of

constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a

specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten

Amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to be

embraced within the Fourteenth. . . . 

It is unnecessary to consider now whether legislation which

restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to

bring about repeal of undesirable legislation, is to be subjected to more

exacting judicial scrutiny under the general prohibitions of the

Fourteenth Amendment than are most other types of legislation. . . . 

Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the

review of statutes directed at particular religious . . . or national . . . or

racial minorities . . . [or] whether prejudice against discrete and insular

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minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail

the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon

to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more

searching judicial inquiry. . . . 

Carolene Products, 304 U.S. at 152-53 n.4 (citations omitted) (emphasis supplied).

See also Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 580 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (observing that the

Court had “consistently held . . . that some objectives, such as ‘a bare . . . desire to

harm a politically unpopular group,’ are not legitimate state interests,” and that

“[w]hen a law exhibits such a desire to harm a politically unpopular group, we have

applied a more searching form of rational basis review to strike down such laws under

the Equal Protection Clause.”) (quoting Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413

U.S. 528, 534 (1973)). 

In his study of the competing theories of judicial review that dominate

contemporary discussion, John Hart Ely argued that the second and third paragraphs

of Carolene Products’ footnote four addressed the following purposes:

Paragraph two suggests that it is an appropriate function of the Court to

keep the machinery of democratic government running as it should, to

make sure the channels of political participation and communication are

kept open. Paragraph three suggests that the Court should also

concern itself with what majorities do to minorities, particularly

mentioning laws “directed at” religious, national, and racial minorities

and those infected by prejudice against them. 

John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust 76 (1980) (emphasis supplied). Stated

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somewhat differently, Ely elaborates Carolene Products’ fourth footnote as

suggesting that, when one of the specifically worded textual provisions of the

Constitution is not implicated, courts may overrule legislative judgments only when

(1) the ins are choking off the channels of political change to ensure that

they will stay in and the outs will stay out, or (2) though no one is

actually denied a voice or a vote, representatives beholden to an

effective majority are systematically disadvantaging some minority out

of simple hostility or a prejudiced refusal to recognize commonalities of

interest,and thereby denying that minority the protection afforded other

groups by a representative system. 

Id. at 103 (emphasis supplied) (footnote omitted).

In the opinion of this court, the concern reflected in Carolene Products’

famous footnote four — that majorities may, if unchecked by a non-majoritarian

institutional balance, ride booted and spurred on the backs of despised or feared

minorities — is precisely the concern addressed by the Lawrence majority. The

theme that reverberates throughout the majority’s opinion is that the class of persons

who engage in “sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle” constitute a

“discrete and insular minority” that not only is denied the dignity and protection

afforded other groups by a representative system, but also is systematically

disadvantaged as a result of the majority’s “animosity toward the class of persons

affected.” Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 574 (quoting Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 634

(1996)). That helps to explain why the majority opinion in Lawrence lacks all the

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106 See, e.g., Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 586 (“Though there is discussion of ‘fundamental

proposition[s],’ and ‘fundamental decisions,’ nowhere does the Court’s opinion declare that

homosexual sodomy is a ‘fundamental right’ under the Due Process Clause; nor does it subject the

Texas law to the standard of review that would be appropriate (strict scrutiny) if homosexual sodomy

were a ‘fundamental right.’”) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).

107 See the discussion at the end of Part Two (Section B(1)), supra.

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indicia of a substantive due process “fundamental rights” analysis — the absence of

which was noted by both Justice Scalia in his dissenting opinion in Lawrence,

106 and

by Judge Birch in the opinions he authored for the Williams IV majority and the

Lofton Court. 

Justice Scalia was correct, but only in part, when asserting that the Lawrence

majority had applied “an unheard-of form of rational-basis review.” 539 U.S. at 586.

The rational-basis review applied in Lawrence is rare, but it is not “unheard-of.”

Instead, it is the form of review contemplated in the third paragraph of Carolene

Products’ footnote 4, to correct institutional imbalances when the presumption of the

self-rectifying nature of the democratic process does not operate as it should.107 As

John Hart Ely put it, even though “no one is actually denied a voice or a vote,

representatives beholden to an effective majority are systematically disadvantaging

some minority out of simple hostility or a prejudiced refusal to recognize

commonalities of interest, and thereby denying that minority the protection afforded

other groups by a representative system.” Ely, supra at 103.

If this is a correct interpretation of the majority’s decision in Lawrence, it does

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not benefit plaintiffs in the present case. As the stipulated facts show, Alabama’s ban

on the sale of sexual devices affects diffuse categories of people: men and women;

married as well as unmarried. None have been identified in the stipulated facts as

“gays,” “lesbians,” or any other “discrete and insular” class of individuals. Moreover,

none of the devices have been characterized as implements that are common to a

homosexual lifestyle. Consequently, it cannot plausibly be argued that the law has

targeted a specific class of individuals for discrimination or harm out of simple

hostility. Stated somewhat differently, the Alabama statute, unlike the Texas antisame-sex-sodomy statute at issue in Lawrence, neither directly nor indirectly burdens

an identifiable group in such a way that a class of stigmatized individuals emerges.

In addition, this case simply is different from Lawrence. The Lawrence

majority was careful to define the scope of its holding, stating:

The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve

persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in

relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not

involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the

government must give formal recognition to any relationship that

homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults

who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual

practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled

to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their

existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct

a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them

the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the

government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of

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personal liberty which the government may not enter.” The Texas

statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion

into the personal and private life of the individual. 

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 578 (quoting Casey, 505 U.S. at 847).

In contrast, the activities prohibited by the Alabama law at issue here are not

limited to private sexual conduct, or to any other activities occurring solely within the

private lives of consenting adults. Instead, the activities prohibited by the law could

very well be exposed to the public in general, including to minors. As the Williams

IV majority recognized, the differences between this case and Lawrence are

significant.

The dissent . . . flatly states that the Lawrence Court rejected public

morality as a legitimate state interest that can justify criminalizing

private consensual sexual conduct, but this conclusion ignores the

obvious difference in what this statute forbids and the prohibitions of

the Texas statute [at issue in Lawrence]. There is nothing “private” or

“consensual” about the advertising and sale of a dildo. And such

advertising and sale is just as likely to be exhibited to children as to

“consenting adults.” 

Williams IV, 378 F.3d at 1238 n.8. This case does not fit squarely within the mold

of Lawrence. Thus, Lawrence’s holding — that public morality was not a sufficiently

rational basis to support the Texas legislation in question there — does not apply to

strike down the Alabama law here.

PART FIVE

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108 Cf., e.g., Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Paradoxes of Legal Science 17 (1928) (“The moral

code of each generation . . . supplies a norm or standard of behavior which struggles to make itself

articulate in law.”).

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Conclusions

In direct answer to the issue on remand, this court finds that the holding in

Williams II — that the subject Alabama statute has a rational basis (e.g., public

morality) — remains “good law,” even though Bowers v. Harwick has been overruled.

In so finding, this court’s holding illustrates that Justice Scalia’s ominous prediction

— that the majority’s opinion in Lawrence “effectively decrees the end of all morals

legislation” — will not be realized.108 Further, this case is distinguishable from

Lawrence,such that public morality still may constitutionally serve as a rational basis

for the law in question here. For the reasons discussed above, the Alabama statute

does not offend the human dignity of a stigmatized class of individuals, nor implicate

equal protection concerns about targeting a “discrete and insular minority” for

discrimination or harm out of simple hostility, in a way that requires the court to find

the law unconstitutional under Lawrence. Accordingly, plaintiffs’ motion for

summary judgment should be denied, and defendant’s cross-motion for summary

judgment granted. An appropriate order consistent with this memorandum opinion

will be entered contemporaneously herewith. 

DONE this 15th day of March, 2006, nunc pro tunc February 28, 2006.

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______________________________

United States District Judge

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