Opinion ID: 2633488
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: fourteenth amendment due process claim

Text: ¶ 180 Because I conclude that Holm's bigamy conviction violates the Utah Constitution's religious freedom guarantees, my dissenting vote is not based on the majority's analysis of Holm's federal constitutional claims. I do, however, wish to register my disagreement with the majority's treatment of Holm's claim that his conviction violates his Fourteenth Amendment right under the Due Process Clause to individual liberty, as recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 156 L.Ed.2d 508 (2003). As the majority acknowledges, the Court in Lawrence stated the principle that absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects, adults are free to choose the nature of their relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives. Id. at 567, 123 S.Ct. 2472. The majority concludes that the private consensual behavior of two individuals who did not claim legal recognition of their relationship somehow constitutes an abuse of the institution of marriage, thus rendering Lawrence inapplicable. On that basis, [34] the majority summarily rejects Holm's due process claim as beyond the scope of Lawrence's holding. Supra ¶ 56. I disagree with this analysis. ¶ 181 As I have discussed extensively above, I do not believe that the conduct at issue threatens the institution of marriage, and I therefore cannot agree that it constitutes an abuse of that institution. The majority fails to offer a persuasive justification for its view to the contrary. It asserts that the behavior at issue in this case implicates the state's ability to regulate marital relationships. Supra ¶ 57. According to the majority, this regulation includes the state's ability to impose a legal marriage on an individual against his or her will in order to enforce spousal support obligations or prevent welfare abuse. In regard to spousal support, I am unpersuaded that the potential interests of consenting adults who voluntarily enter legally unrecognized relationships despite the financial risks they might face in the future justify the imposition of criminal penalties on the parties to those relationships. Under the majority's rationale, the state would be justified in imposing criminal penalties on unmarried persons who enter same-sex relationships simply because the state, under the applicable constitutional and statutory provisions, is unable to hold them legally married. In regard to welfare abuse, I find it difficult to understand how those in polygamous relationships that are ineligible to receive legal sanction are committing welfare abuse when they seek benefits available to unmarried persons. ¶ 182 The majority also offers the view that [t]he state must be able to ... further the proliferation of social unions our society deems beneficial while discouraging those deemed harmful. Supra ¶ 61. The Supreme Court in Lawrence, however, rejected the very notion that a state can criminalize behavior merely because the majority of its citizens prefers a different form of personal relationship. Striking down Texas's criminal sodomy statute as unconstitutional, the Court in Lawrence recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment's individual liberty guarantee gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex. 539 U.S. at 572, 123 S.Ct. 2472. As described in Lawrence, this protection encompasses not merely the consensual act of sex itself but the autonomy of the person in making choices relating to ... family relationships. Id. at 574, 123 S.Ct. 2472. The sodomy statute was thus held unconstitutional because it sought 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. Id. at 567, 123 S.Ct. 2472. ¶ 183 I agree with the majority that marriage, when understood as a legal union, qualifies as an institution the law protects. See id. at 568, 123 S.Ct. 2472. However, the Court's statement in Lawrence that a state may interfere when such an institution is abuse[d], id., together with its holding that the sodomy statute was unconstitutional, leads me to infer that, in the Court's view, sexual acts between consenting adults and the private personal relationships within which these acts occur, do not abuse the institution of marriage simply because they take place outside its confines. See id. at 585, 123 S.Ct. 2472 (O'Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (indicating that Texas's criminal sodomy law did not implicate the state's interest in preserving the traditional institution of marriage but expressed mere moral disapproval of an excluded group). In the wake of Lawrence, the Virginia Supreme Court has come to the same conclusion, striking down its state law criminalizing fornication. Martin v. Ziherl, 269 Va. 35, 607 S.E.2d 367, 371 (2005). In my opinion, these holdings correctly recognize that individuals in today's society may make varied choices regarding the organization of their family and personal relationships without fearing criminal punishment. ¶ 184 The majority does not adequately explain how the institution of marriage is abused or state support for monogamy threatened simply by an individual's choice to participate in a religious ritual with more than one person outside the confines of legal marriage. Rather than offering such an explanation, the majority merely proclaims that the public nature of polygamists' attempts to extralegally redefine the acceptable parameters of a fundamental social institution like marriage is plain. Supra ¶ 63. It is far from plain to me. ¶ 185 I am concerned that the majority's reasoning may give the impression that the state is free to criminalize any and all forms of personal relationships that occur outside the legal union of marriage. While under Lawrence laws criminalizing isolated acts of sodomy are void, the majority seems to suggest that the relationships within which these acts occur may still receive criminal sanction. Following such logic, nonmarital cohabitation might also be considered to fall outside the scope of federal constitutional protection. Indeed, the act of living alone and unmarried could as easily be viewed as threatening social norms. ¶ 186 In my view, any such conclusions are foreclosed under Lawrence. Essentially, the Court's decision in Lawrence simply reformulates the longstanding principle that, in order to secure individual liberty, . . . certain kinds of highly personal relationships must be given a substantial measure of sanctuary from unjustified interference by the State. Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 618, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984); see also Laurence H. Tribe, Lawrence v. Texas: The Fundamental Right That Dare Not Speak Its Name, 117 Harv. L.Rev. 1893, 1922 (2004) ([T]he claim Lawrence accepted ... is that intimate relations may not be micromanaged or overtaken by the state.). Whether referred to as a right of intimate or intrinsic association, as in Roberts, 468 U.S. at 618, 104 S.Ct. 3244, a right to privacy, as in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 485, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972), a right to make choices concerning family living arrangements, as in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 499, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (plurality), or a right to choose the nature of one's personal relationships, as in Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 574, 123 S.Ct. 2472, this individual liberty guarantee essentially draws a line around an individual's home and family and prevents governmental interference with what happens inside, as long as it does not involve injury or coercion or some other form of harm to individuals or to society. [35] As the Court in Lawrence recognized: [F]or centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn [certain private] 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 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. Id. at 571, 123 S.Ct. 2472. The Court determined that when adults ... with full and mutual consent from each other enter into particular personal relationships with no threat of injury or coercion, a state may not criminalize the relationships themselves or the consensual intimate conduct that occurs within them. Id. at 578, 123 S.Ct. 2472. ¶ 187 In conclusion, I agree with the majority that because Holm's conduct in this case involved a minor, he is unable to prevail on his individual liberty claim under the Due Process Clause. However, I disagree with the majority's implication that the same result would apply where an individual enters a private relationship with another adult.