Opinion ID: 76651
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Scope of the District Court's History and Tradition Analysis

Text: 38 The district court began its Glucksberg -mandated history and tradition inquiry by defining its task as one of determining whether to recognize a fundamental right to sexual privacy. Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d at 1277. After an extensive survey of the history of sex in American culture and law — replete with cites to the Kinsey studies and Michel Foucault — the district court concluded that there exists a constitutionally inherent right to sexual privacy that firmly encompasses state non-interference with private, adult, consensual sexual relationships. Id. at 1296. As examined above, the Supreme Court's own reticence in this area, and its admonition to carefully define the right at stake, convince us that the district court erred in undertaking to find a generalized right to sexual privacy. Given this over-broad starting point, the district court's subsequent inquiry, predictably, was likewise broader than called for by the facts of the case. The inquiry should have been focused not broadly on the vast topic of sex in American cultural and legal history, but narrowly and more precisely on the treatment of sexual devices within that history and tradition. 39