Court Opinion

ID: 9566362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:37:59.359685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:21.205078
License: Public Domain

GORDON, Justice
(dissenting):
The majority notes but fails to address itself to the overriding issue in these cases, the right to privacy. This is in sharp contrast to the thorough and well-documented discussions of this constitutional guarantee in the Court of Appeals’ decisions. The manner in which the litigants’ arguments are left out without any effort to refute *112their reasoning highlights the failure to directly state the logical result of the holding, — that the police power of the state may legitimately intrude into the bedrooms of consenting heterosexual adults.
The United 'States Supreme Court has clearly stated that the fundamental right of privacy inheres in the individual citizens of this nation and the government must show a compelling state interest in order to regulate or prohibit conduct which infringes on this protection. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972). This is especially true where conduct occurs within the privacy of one’s home. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969). I am baffled as to how the majority can acknowledge that “[t]he right [of privacy] exists within the contexts of the intimate sexual relations between consenting adults in private,” whether single or married, and then can conclude that the Legislature may separate certain of these relations it finds distasteful, label them as misconduct and make the participants felons subject to a prison term of up to twenty years in the state penitentiary. By declining to afford the protection of privacy to “activity [which] has not been discussed by the United States Supreme Court” the majority implies that sexual activity for purposes other than having children may be prohibited by the Legislature.
Apparently the majority would find the required “important state interests” in a case where the police, for example, acting on a reliable tip, break into a married couple’s bedroom in the middle of the night and arrest them for engaging in the type of behavior referred to in the statutes, A.R.S. §§ 13-651 and 13-652. Without approving these types of sexual activities, I personally would find such a use of the government’s police power to be repugnant to the modem notions of individual rights and privacy.
I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ decisions in State v. Bateman and State v. Callaway as they both appear to be correct interpretations of the law as laid down by the United States Supreme Court in this area.
I must, therefore, respectfully dissent.