Lawrence v. Texas

by Jeremy Leaming

This year marks major anniversaries of several landmark Supreme Court opinions, including two that advanced liberty and equality. In January 1973, the high court in its Roe v. Wade opinion trumpeted liberty by striking a Texas law banning abortion. Equality and liberty were also advanced in June 2003 when a majority of the justices in Lawrence v. Texas invalidated a law targeting sex between consenting adults of the same gender.

On Jan. 18 – 19 as part of the Constitution in 2020 project, several groups, including ACS, will host “Liberty/Equality: The View from Roe’s 40th and Lawrence’s 10th Anniversaries.” (See below for more information about the gathering, including a tentative conference schedule.)

In striking down a state law banning abortion, Justice Harry Blackmun declared that a “right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state actions, as we feel it is, or as, the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

The Roe court, however, did not find this right to be absolute, and subsequently we have seen an erosion of this liberty in a steady and disconcerting fashion by courts and lawmakers over the years. Indeed a string of states over the past few years has ratcheted up efforts to make it vastly more difficult for many women, especially the young and poor, to have abortions. State lawmakers have also pushed laws requiring physicians to lecture women on the alleged dangers of abortions and/or undergo ultrasounds all in an effort to slow the process or dissuade women from abortions.

In 2003’s Lawrence, the majority of the court also advanced liberty by knocking down a Texas law that criminalized sex between people of the same gender. And like Roe, the majority found that liberty is broad enough to prevent the government from intruding upon intimate relations of lesbians and gay men. Indeed, Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the Lawrence majority, citied the high court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion upholding Roe. In Casey, the Court wrote, “These matters, involving the most intimate personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Kennedy’s Lawrence opinion also advanced equality, saying the challengers of the Texas law persuasively argued that their equal protection rights were subverted by a law that criminalized an intimate part of their relationships.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which raises the question whether the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to bear arms applies to states and local governments. Going into argument, incorporation of the Second Amendment right seemed a given - after all, states already have to obey virtually every right in the Bill of Rights. The critical question was whether the Court would breathe new life into the Privileges or Immunities Clause, and honor the part of the Fourteenth Amendment's text that clearly protects substantive fundamental rights from state infringement.

The Privileges or Immunities Clause was intended to be the centerpiece of the Fourteenth Amendment, but it was written out of the Constitution by the Supreme Court in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases. The decision has been regarded as one of the worst in the Court's history, and roundly condemned by the Amendment's framers in the 1870s, Justice Harlan in the early 20th century, and Justice Black in the 1940s. The overwhelming consensus among scholars across the ideological spectrum - reflected in a law professors' brief filed by CAC in McDonald - is that Slaughter-House obliterated the text and history of the Clause through a profoundly incorrect interpretation of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the Privileges or Immunities Clause received a chilly reception from the Court on Tuesday, especially from those Justices who most profess to take the Constitution's text and history seriously. Justice Scalia belittled the Clause, accusing Alan Gura, McDonald's attorney, of "bucking for some place on some law school faculty" by advancing an argument that was "the darling of the professoriate." Scalia, supposedly the Court's chief originalist, wouldn't even consider the merits of the argument. Chief Justice Roberts, too, refused to follow the Constitution's text and history where it leads. He explicitly worried that the Privileges or Immunities Clause would allow for broad protections of substantive liberty; he preferred to rely on the Due Process Clause, since that text is about process, and does not easily lend itself to protecting substantive fundamental rights. While Roberts and Scalia were content to rely on substantive due process to protect gun rights, they seemed to want to reserve the opportunity to bash the doctrine in future cases involving rights they don't recognize. Other Justices were less overtly hostile, but none seemed willing to revive the Clause.

In light of its reception at the Court, was Gura too bold?