Bowers V Hardwick Case Brief

This case began when officers were responding to a weapons disturbance on a private residence. When the police entered petitioner Lawrence’s apartment, they witnessed him and another male, petitioner Garner, engaging in consensual sexual act. Both petitioners were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse, which was in violation of the Texas statute that forbade two people of the same sex to to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. The State Court of Appeals held the sentence and said that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the fourteenth amendment. The court had considered a case, Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, pushing the point across. The resolution for this case could be found depending on whether the petitioners, as free adults are allowed to engage in sexual conduct, exercising their liberty under the Due Process Clause. By this, the court deemed it necessary to reconsider the Bowers holding. The case’s initial statement was, “The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy… ,” 478 U.S., at 190 - informs on the Court’s failure to acknowledge the expanse of the liberty at stake. The laws in the Bowers case sought to control a person’s relationship, whether it would be formally

However, also stated that there is no historical standing in that origin of law that was targeting homosexual conduct in a direct view. Sodomy laws passed in earlier times, were not passed to prohibit same sex acts but was aimed to ban sexual acts that were not intended to procreate in general, whether it was between men and woman, or man and man. Also, those laws were not enforced between consenting adults in private. Prosecutions against sodomy were of predatory acts against anyone who were forced and non consenting; such as children and men, and or between man and