In a sweeping decision issued on June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court struck down a Texasstate statute that made it a crime for homosexuals to engage in certain private sex acts. Specifically,the Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas held that the due process privacy guarantee of the FourteenthAmendment extends to protect consensual gay sex. (1) Although the Court also considered whether the Texas state statuteviolated the constitutional right to equal protection, the Court ultimately based its ruling on broaderprivacy grounds. In addition, the Court also overturned its 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick , acontroversial case in which the Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to privacy thatprotects homosexual sodomy. This report provides an overview of the Supreme Court's opinion in Lawrence v. Texas , coupled with a discussion of its implications for future cases involving gay rights in general and same-sex marriage in particular. For a more detailed discussion of currentdevelopments regarding gay marriage, see CRS Report RL31994 , Same-Sex Marriages: LegalIssues , by [author name scrubbed]. In 1998, sheriff's officers, responding to a false report of a weapons disturbance, entered theprivate residence of John Geddes Lawrence, found Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaged inconsensual sex, and arrested the two men for violating a Texas statute that prohibits homosexualsodomy. (2) Under the Texaspenal code, "a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with anotherindividual of the same sex;" (3) "deviate sexual intercourse" is defined to include oral or analsex. (4) Following their convictions, Lawrence and Garner challenged the statute on constitutionalequal protection and due process privacy grounds. Although a panel of the Court of Appeals of Texasruled in their favor, the full Court of Appeals, sitting en banc , reversed, thereby reaffirming theoriginal convictions. (5) When the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to review the case, Lawrence and Garnerappealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. (6) The Supreme Court granted certiorari, (7) and ultimately struck downthe state statute, thereby reversing the Court of Appeals of Texas. (8) At the time of the Lawrence decision, twelve other states, in addition to Texas, hadanti-sodomy laws on their books. However, of the thirteen states with anti-sodomy laws, only fourstates, including Texas, had laws that criminalized sodomy between same-sex couples but notbetween heterosexual partners. (9) The remaining states with anti-sodomy laws criminalized sodomyfor all couples, regardless of whether they consisted of same-sex or opposite-sex partners. Notably, the number of states with anti-sodomy laws had declined significantly in the nearlytwo decades since the landmark Bowers v. Hardwick case upheld a Georgia law that outlawedhomosexual sodomy in 1986. At that time, 24 states and the District of Columbia had anti-sodomylaws on the books, but half of those states, including Georgia, subsequently legislatively repealedor judicially overturned their respective anti-sodomy statutes. (10) By overturning Bowers andby deciding Lawrence on privacy grounds, the Supreme Court simultaneously overturned all stateanti-sodomy laws, including statutes that do not distinguish between heterosexual and homosexualcouples. The Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas marks one of the few instances in whichthe Court has agreed to participate in a wider legal debate surrounding "gay rights." Indeed, over thepast two decades, the Supreme Court has heard relatively few cases involving such issues. (11) Of the gay rights cases thatthe Court has heard, two cases, namely Bowers v. Hardwick (12) and Romer v. Evans , (13) are of particularsignificance to the outcome in Lawrence and are therefore discussed in greater detail in thissection. (14) In Bowers v. Hardwick , the Supreme Court considered a challenge to a Georgia statute thatcriminalized both homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. Ruling that the Due Process clause of theFourteenth Amendment did not provide a fundamental right to engage in consensual homosexualsodomy, even in the privacy of one's own home, the Court upheld the Georgia statute. (15) Although other SupremeCourt rulings have recognized a due process right of privacy that protects personal decisionsregarding activities such as marriage, contraception, and procreation from governmentinterference, (16) the Bowers decision essentially refused to recognize a similar right of privacy to protect individualsengaged in homosexual sodomy. The other Supreme Court case shaping the Court's decision in Lawrence is Romer v. Evans .Decided in 1996, Romer held that Amendment 2 of the Colorado Constitution, which barredlocalities from enacting civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation, violated the EqualProtection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (17) Although classifications based on sexual orientation do notreceive the heightened constitutional scrutiny normally reserved for review of suspect classificationssuch as race or gender, the Court in this case nevertheless determined that the Colorado amendmentviolated the guarantee of equal protection because the law was motivated strictly by animus forhomosexuals and because there was otherwise no rational basis for enacting such a sweepingrestriction on the legal rights of gays and lesbians. According to the Court: We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifieshomosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. ThisColorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment2 violates the Equal Protection Clause. (18) Despite the fact that Bowers and Romer were decided on different constitutional grounds,both of the cases involved issues that were raised in the Lawrence case. Ultimately, the SupremeCourt overruled its decision in Bowers , holding that the due process right to privacy extends toprotect private, consensual sexual activity. Although Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who originallyvoted with the majority to uphold the Georgia statute at issue in Bowers , did not join in the 5-4decision to overrule that case, she did agree with the majority's decision to strike down the Texasstatute for different reasons. In a separate opinion reminiscent of the Court's ruling in Romer ,O'Connor indicated that she was voting to strike down the Texas sodomy law as a violation of theconstitutional guarantee of equal protection (19) . The Court's opinion, O'Connor's concurrence, and the dissent'sargument are detailed in the following section. In their petition seeking Supreme Court review, attorneys for Lawrence and Garner posedthree questions to the Court: (1) did the Texas statute violate the Equal Protection Clause of theFourteenth Amendment; (2) did the Texas statute violate the right to privacy embedded in the DueProcess Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and (3) should Bowers be overruled? (20) The Court's considerationof these and other issues is discussed in the following section. Under the second question presented in Lawrence -- which formed the basis for the Court'seventual ruling -- the Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether or not the homosexualsodomy statute violates the right to privacy embedded in the Due Process Clause of the FourteenthAmendment. Because the Bowers v. Hardwick case specifically considered the same issue, theCourt's decision on the privacy question likewise affected the Court's decision on the third and finalquestion -- whether or not to overrule Bowers . The Court ultimately overruled Bowers and held thatgovernment interference with a private and intimate consensual adult activity is a violation of thedue process right to privacy. This section describes the Court's reasoning and discusses the dissent'sresponse. The Court began its analysis in Lawrence by summarizing its substantive due process privacydoctrine. Under the Supreme Court's privacy jurisprudence, the Court has recognized a constitutionalright to privacy despite the fact that this right is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. In Bowers , for example, the Court noted that the Due Process right to privacy protects from governmentinterference a wide range of personal decisions regarding issues such as child rearing, familyrelationships, procreation, marriage, contraception, and abortion. (21) This right to privacy isgrounded in the notion that certain freedoms are so "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept ofordered liberty" that "neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed." (22) Alternatively, certainliberties may be deemed fundamental because they are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history andtradition." (23) Becausethese two tests do not always articulate clear standards for determining when a liberty is so"fundamental" that it deserves constitutional protection under the Due Process Clause, extending theright to privacy to liberties that have not previously been deemed fundamental by the Court, such asa right to engage in consensual homosexual sodomy, can sometimes prove controversial. After outlining its privacy jurisprudence, the Court set forth its reasons for reconsidering itsdecision in Bowers . Of primary importance to the Court was the idea that the Bowers Court had"misapprehended the claim of liberty there presented to it." (24) In the Lawrence Court'sview, the issue in Bowers was about more than a fundamental right to engage in homosexualsodomy. Rather, the case was about whether or not individuals have the right to make personalchoices regarding their intimate relationships free of government interference. (25) Although the Lawrence Court did not explicitly deem homosexual sodomy to be a fundamental right, the Court nonethelessconcluded that the Bowers Court had failed to properly define the liberty interests at stake whenindividuals make private, consensual choices about their sexual conduct. The Court criticized the Bowers decision on several additional grounds.