Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf
Page Number: 47.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

15 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

brutal murder of Matthew Shepard?  Matthew was targeted 
by two men, tortured, tied to a buck fence, and left to die for 
who he was.  See K. Drake, Gay Man Beaten, Burned and 
Left Tied to Fence, Casper Star-Tribune, Oct. 10, 1998, p.
A1.  Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-deadliest
mass shooting in U. S. history?  See S. Stolberg, For Gays
Across America, a Massacre Punctuates Fitful Gains, N. Y. 
Times, June 13, 2016, p. A1.  Rates of violent victimization 
are  still  significantly  higher  for  LGBT  people,  with 
transgender persons particularly vulnerable to attack.  See 
Dept. of Justice, J. Truman & R. Morgan, Violent Victimi-
zation  by  Sexual  Orientation  and  Gender  Identity,  2017–
2020 (2022).

Determined  not  to  live  as  “social  outcasts,”  Masterpiece 
Cakeshop,  584  U. S.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  9),  LGBT  people 
have risen up.  The social movement for LGBT rights has 
been long and complex.  See L. Faderman, The Gay Revolu-
tion  (2015) (Faderman).    But  if  there  ever  was  an  “earth-
quake,” it occurred in the final days of June in 1969 at the
Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.  Id., at 169.  The Stone-
wall Inn was a gay bar with a “varied and lively clientele.” 
Id.,  at  171.  Its  “ ‘unruly’  element”  made  it  “an  especially 
inviting  target”  for  police  raids.   J.  D’Emilio, Sexual  Poli-
tics, Sexual Communities 231 (1983) (D’Emilio).  “Patrons 
of the Stonewall tended to be young and nonwhite.  Many
were drag queens. . . . ”  Ibid.  Just before midnight on June 
27, the New York police’s Public Morals Squad showed up 
to  the  bar  and  started  making  arrests.  Drag  queens,  for 
example, were arrested for offenses like being “disguised” 
in  “unnatural  attire.”    N. Y.  Penal  Law  Ann.  §240.35(4) 
(West 1967).

What started out as a fairly routine police raid, however,
became anything but.  Outside the Stonewall Inn, patrons
who had been thrown out started to form a crowd.  “Jeers 
and catcalls arose from the onlookers when a paddy wagon
departed with the bartender, the Stonewall’s bouncer, and