List of LGBTQ-related cases in the United States Supreme Court

This is a List about cases related toLGBTissues that were brought before theUnited States Supreme Court.
In 1972, the Supreme Court dismissed the case ofBaker v. Nelson, which effectively denied that homosexual couples have a constitutional right to get married.This ruling was later overturned inObergefell v. Hodges.
Two gay men anonymously challengedVirginia'ssodomy law, arguing that the law violated constitutional rights guaranteed by theFirst, theFifth, theEighth, andFourteenth Amendments. InDoe v. Commonwealth's Attorney of Richmond, a three-judge panel on theEastern District of Virginiaruled, by 2 to 1, that the statute was not unconstitutional.On March 29, 1976, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the decision without oral argument or written decision.Justices Brennan,Thurgood Marshall, andJohn Paul Stevensnoted that they would have set the case for full consideration.
An openly gay man challenged the sodomy law ofGeorgiabased on an arrest he experienced in early July, 1982 in his home inAtlanta. Michael Hardwick won this case in theCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The Circuit Court reasoned that because the Supreme Court had found there to be constitutional rights to childrearing and education, procreation, marriage, contraception, and abortion, it was inevitable that there is a constitutional right to private, consensual sodomy as well.Mike Bowers, theAttorney General of Georgia, appealed to the Supreme Court.
By five to four, the highest court overturned the 11th Circuit Court's decision inBowers v. Hardwick. JusticeHarry Blackmun, who in the previous case ofDoe(see above) voted to uphold the Virginia ban on sodomy, now voted to strike down the Georgia ban, joining the three who dissented fromDoe. Justice White wrote the majority opinion; Chief JusticeWarren E. BurgerandLewis F. Powellwrote concurring opinions; also silently supporting the White opinion wereWilliam Rehnquist(soon to become the Chief Justice) andSandra Day O'Connor. White used three modes of analysis in determining whether sodomy was constitutionally protected: 1) precedents dealing with childrearing and education, procreation, marriage, contraception, and abortion (as the 11th Circuit Court outlined), 2) the plausibility of finding that there is a fundamental right to engage in sodomy, and 3)rational basis review. White rejected Hardwick's claim with all three modes.
We first register our disagreement with the Court of Appeals and with [Hardwick] that the Court's prior cases have construed the Constitution to confer a right of privacy that extends to homosexual sodomy and, for all intents and purposes, have decided this case."Accepting the decisions in these cases, ... we think it evident that none of the rights announced in those cases bears any resemblance to the claimed constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy that is asserted in this case. No connection between family, marriage, or procreation, on the one hand, and homosexual activity, on the other, has been demonstrated, either by the Court of Appeals or by [Hardwick].
Next, White rejected the prospect that the Court could "announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do." He canvassed the history of sodomy laws in the United States: "Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots. Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law, and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the union had criminal sodomy laws. ... Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' is, at best, facetious." And White emphasized that the Court should exercisejudicial restraintwhen possibly pronouncing a new "fundamental right."
The last mode of analysis was the rational basis test. Hardwick had asserted "that there must be a rational basis for the law, and that there is none in this case other than the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable. This is said to be an inadequate rationale to support the law. The law, however, 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."