Bowers V Hardwick Case Summary

I. Facts:

On September 17, 1998, John Lawrence had two guests over at his home in Houston, Texas. Lawrence and his two guests, Eubanks and Garner were all drinking heavily, so they decided to spend the night. Eubanks and Garner had an on-again off-again relationship for eight years. Lawrence and Eubanks were good friends for over 20 years. That night, Lawrence had been flirting with Garner. Eubanks noticed this occurrence, and he got extremely upset. This ultimately led to Eubanks calling the police and telling them that a black man was threatening with a gun. John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were then intruded on by the Harris County sheriff’s department. The police entered the apartment and witnessed both Lawrence and Garner engaging in consensual

At the time in the state of Texas, the act of sodomy was illegal. Sodomy is defined as anal or oral intercourse. Both Lawrence and Garner were arrested and the police decided to charge them with “deviate sex.” The two spent the night in jail, but the next day they were released and charged. Lawrence then decided to appeal arguing that the Homosexual Conduct law was unconstitutional. The case trial began on March 26, 2003, four years after the invasion into Lawrence’s home. During the trial, the Bowers v. Hardwick case was brought up. In this case, Hardwick who was a homosexual was observed by a police officer in Georgia. This police officer witnessed Hardwick and another person engaging in homosexual sodomy. After the Courts decision, there were 5 votes in favor of Bower, and 4 votes against. These two cases were both very similar, but the outcome was very different. One factor of this outcome is the year both cases occurred. Bowers v. Hardwick occurred in 1985 while Lawrence v. Texas occurred in 2003. This is an 18 year

There are so many people in America that dislike and discriminated against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people just because of their sexuality. Texas was an entire state that discriminated against this group of people. The Lawrence v. Texas case change history for the better. If Lawrence had not filed a case, sodomy could still be illegal. Finally, the Courts noticed that the Fourteenth Amendment was not being fully fulfilled. After they noticed and recognized that citizens were not getting treated equally by the law, they actively changed it by making sodomy legal. Justice Kennedy correctly wrote the opinion, and he made the most sense. Personally, I strongly disagree with Scalia. Written in his dissent, he stated that he did not believe homosexual sodomy to be a fundamental right. For the way I see it, love is love. Although, Scalia did prove a good point by stating that it was unfair that the court overturned Bowers case. I agree with the second decision the Court made in the Bowers case, but I do think it was unfair that only the Bowers case was overturned and reevaluated. There are other cases that may not have been necessarily constitutional, but have not been reconsidered. Scalia stated that the Planned Parenthood case an example of these cases. He also stated that the Court should be consistent about which cases they decide to