Civil Rights Cases Decided By The United States Supreme Court

Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 11, 12
Lesson
Minimum of 2 scholarly sources in addition to the textbook.
Instructions
This assignment is comprised of 2 parts, the first of which is due this week. Part II will be due in Week 7.

In Part I this week, choose a case from your state (TEXAS) that involves civil rights or civil liberties that was decided by the United States Supreme Court. If your state does not have a case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court, choose a civil rights case from another state for which the United States Supreme Court issued a decision.

Here is a brief description of civil rights and civil liberties: Civil rights refers to equal social opportunities under the law. It gives you these freedoms such as the right to vote, the right to public education, or a fair trial, among other things, regardless of your wealth or race. Civil liberties mean freedom of religion, equal treatment and due process under the law, and the right to privacy.

You should be able to go online and look up your state and famous cases decided by the Supreme Court. For example, Brown v Board of Education (1951) started in Topeka, Kansas and ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States. Another example would be Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v Steve Sisolak, Governor of Nevada (2020) that started in Nevada and ended up the United States Supreme Court. A good source of information about cases decided by the United States Supreme Court is www.scotusblog.com. Other sources can be researched online using search terms for “civil rights cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.” Be sure to use a case actually decided by the United States Supreme Court, and not a case decided by your state’s supreme court or a different court. A case that is still pending before the United States Supreme Court should not be used. If you are unsure, please contact your Professor BEFORE you pick your case and submit the assignment as this is a significant part of your overall grade.

Research your court case and write an outline of the case that you will be using to prepare a presentation, which will either be a narrated PowerPoint, a Kaltura Video, or some other format as approved by your instructor. If you are unsure, then verify the presentation format with your instructor before starting work on this assignment.

This week’s assignment should include (a) summary of the case; (b) a case outline; and a summary.

A. Summary of the Case
In one or two paragraphs, provide a general overview of the case that serves as a snapshot of what the case is about and how it ended up in your state high court. A summary is using your words to write a brief history of the case. Do not give your opinion or your interpretation but stick to the facts only.

B: Case Outline
Your court case outline should include:

Title: Name of the case
Facts of the case: Provide key facts involving the case.
History of the case: What legal action was taken based on what your state laws say about this case?
Legal questions: What were the legal issues the court had to decide?
Decision or holdings: Did the court decide for the plaintiff or the defendant? Explain the reason behind the decision?
Verdict and opinion (judgement): What were the concurring and dissenting opinions? How many judges decided for the defendant and how many justices decided against the defendant? What was the final verdict from the judge or the jury, if it was a jury trial?
C. Conclusion
What was the resulting impact of the ruling? How did the citizens of your state benefit from it? Was this a good decision?

Writing Requirements (APA format)
The length of your outline will vary. Usually an outline is anywhere from 1-3 pages long. Make sure to write full sentences to explain your case. It is a concise list to be used as a reference for you during the presentation.
Using the outline, you will be describing the court case in your presentation and the scenario around the court case. The use of Wikipedia as a primary source of information is to be avoided – it is not a reliable source of information.
Search for an example of a case outline in the Internet. Without going into much detail at this state, each of the items listed above has a subject sentence with 3-6 bullet points that can help you expand on the topic.
For Week 7, you will be creating a narrated PowerPoint, or a video as approved by your instructor, from this week’s outline.
This assignment is worth 200 points.
1-inch margins
Double spaced
12-point Times New Roman font
Title page
References page (minimum of 2 scholarly sources in addition to textbook if cited)

ANSWER

Civil Rights Case

Summary of the Case

 On September 17, 1998, Houston police entered the home of Lawrence after a citizen made a weapon disturbance report. On arrival, the police found Lawrence having consensual sex with his partner, Tyron Garner. Both Lawrence and Garner were arrested and charged under the Texas statute that criminalized “deviate sexual intercourse” (Gilkis, 2018). Deviate sexual intercourse was defined as any sexual activity between people of the same sex. Lawrence and his partner were found guilty and charged.

The Lambda Legal Defense and Education, an organization committed to advocating for gay rights, took and appealed the case. The law organization indicated the court’s decision had violated the Fourteenth Amendment (the equal protection clause). The Texas court system relied on Bowers v. Hardwick case, and, therefore, the plaintiffs lost the case. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the court had ruled that sodomy was not a protected right, making the practice illegal (Gilkis, 2018). However, the Law organization believed that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule in their favor, considering its recent ruling in Romer v. Evans (1996). In the Romer v. Evans case, the Supreme Court voided Colorado’s laws discriminating against gay people. Therefore, the Lambda Legal believed the Supreme Court would also overturn Bowers v. Hardwick. On December 2, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case, and oral arguments were presented on March 26, 2003.

Case Outline

Title: Lawrence et al. versus Texas (2003)

Case Facts

What was the legal action taken based on what your state laws say about this case?

• On November 20, 1999, Lawrence and Garner pleaded no contest to the charges and waived their right to a trial. Both Lawrence and Tyron were found guilty and fined $125 each for violating the state statute prohibiting sexual contact between two individuals of the same sex.
• On November 3, 1999, the Court of Appeal, Texas, heard the case and later made a 2–1 ruling that the Texas Law was unconstitutional (Gilkis, 2018). The Chief Justice indicated that the Texas law violated the Equal Rights Amendment, which prohibited race, color, sex, national origin, and creed discrimination.
• On March 15, 2001, the same court (Court of Appeal, Texas) reversed the three-judge panel’s ruling without even hearing the oral arguments. The Court of Appeal (7-2) denied the equal rights protection arguments.
• On April 17, 2002, the Defense Attorneys went to the highest appellate court in the State, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. However, this court also denied their request. The defense attorney asked the court to drop the charges against Lawrence and Garner, indicating the decision violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take the case on December 2, 2002,

Legal questions: What were the legal issues the court had to decide?

The legal defense team for Texas mainly based their arguments on social and religious conservatism. Alabama, Utah, and South Carolina advised the Supreme Court that sex between homosexuals was different from heterosexual’s sex. They said sodomy between homosexuals had dire physical, psychological, and emotional consequences and was non-reproductive, differentiating it from heterosexual sex. Other Texas defense team members claimed that homosexuals were pervasive, promiscuous, and self-destructive. On the other hand, the Defense team for Lawrence and Garner mainly based their arguments on equal protection of the Law.

The U.S. Supreme Court had the following to consider:

1. Whether Texas’ Law of “Homosexual Conduct“-which prohibited sexual intimacy between same-sex partners but not in heterosexual partners- violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether the petitioner’s criminal convictions for consensual sex violated the fundamental privacy rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
3. Whether the Bowers v. Hardwick needed to be overruled

Decision or holdings

Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lawrence et al. It overruled the Bowers v. Hardwick. The majority opinion was that homosexuals have the right to engage in sexual activity, and their sexual choices and decisions were entitled to constitutional protection. The court also indicated that moral disapproval does not justify criminalizing sodomy. Finally, the court ruled that Lawrence and Garner were entitled to privacy and respect, and the State could not demean their existence by criminalizing their sexual decisions.

Explain the reason behind the decision?

The following were the rationale for this decision:

• The equal rights protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits sex discrimination, meaning the Texas Law is discriminative. The Law disregards the gender of involved persons, i.e., it allows female-male sodomy but criminalizes male-male sodomy (Levine, 2013).
• Consensual sex between adults, irrespective of their gender, is protected by the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment. One of the ruling justices stated that the Law protects “personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, [and] child rearing” and that homosexuals “may seek autonomy for these purposes” (Gilkis, 2018). Therefore, the Texas Law violated these protections, making it unconstitutional.
• None of the parties in the case was injured or coerced into the sexual activity. The case also did not involve prostitution, minors, or indecent public conduct. Therefore, Texas was no legitimate reason or justification to intrude on any individual’s private life.

Verdict and opinion (judgment)

Concurring Opinions

Justice Sandra O’Connor concurred with the majority opinion but provided a different rationale for invalidating Texas’ Law (Summers, 2015. Unlike other justices, Sandra disputed using the Due Process to justify the overruling of the Bowers (Summers, 2015). She stated that instead of including sexuality in the Equal Rights Protection, the court should overrule Bowers on the grounds of gender discrimination. Sandra feared that society would not tolerate the sodomy law for long because it contradicts its traditional marriage institution (Gilkis, 2018). Therefore, she felt it was better to overturn Bowers in the context of gender discrimination.

Dissenting Opinions

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas begged the court to reconsider overruling Bowers. These legal officers pointed out that many low-level courts relied on Bowers for rulings, and overturning it would affect them. The officials also pointed out that the most justices in favor of Lawrence et al. supported the overruling of Bowers, yet most upheld Roe v. Wade, which was based on a similar principle.

Justice Scalia wrote that state laws against same-sex marriage, prostitution, bestiality, incest, obscenity, fornication, and masturbation would not be sustainable if the court was unwilling to validate laws based on moral choices it had done in Bowers (Bachhofer, 2019. p.267). According to Scalia, the court had signed into the homosexual agenda whose goal is to remove the moral opprobrium traditionally tied to homosexual conduct. By supporting Lawrence et al., the court had departed from its neutral role and yielded to the culture war.

How many judges decided for the defendant, and how many justices decided against the defendant?

Three judges voted for the defended, and six voted against the defendant (Gilkis, 2018).

What was the final verdict from the judge or the jury if it was a jury trial?

The final verdict in Lawrence v. Texas was that Texas’s Law that criminalized “deviant sexual intercourse” between two consenting adults was unconstitutional because it violated the Due Process Clause. The Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas indicated that consensual sex between two adults is a right protected by the due process in the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence et al. won the case. Bowers v. Hardwick case was overturned. The Supreme Court also held that consensual sex is private and free, and the State has no right to interfere.

Conclusion

What was the resulting impact of the ruling? How did the citizens of your state benefit from it? Was this a good decision?

The ruling set empowered gay rights movements. The court legalized gay sex by ruling that anti-sodomy states violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Spindelman, 2013). For years, public sections had used sodomy to stigmatize the gay community. However, its legitimization empowered the gay community, allowing them to share the full range of their sexual preferences that defined their identity. The ruling also laid the foundation for same-sex marriage. In 2006, the Supreme Court in California legalized same-sex marriage. The State’s Supreme Court cited Lawrence v. Texas to justify the ruling that same-sex partners were entitled to civil marriage (Gilkis, 2018).

The court’s ruling was a good decision because the citizens of Texas benefited from it. Before the ruling, thousands of people could face punishment for being gay. Society was reluctant to recognize the rights of this group, but the case removed these barriers by igniting media conversations about gay rights (Spindelman, 2013). The ruling was the first step in ending the era of intolerance. It brought a new era where respect for equal rights and treatment across various social groups became cultural in mainstream America.

References

Bachhofer, A. (2019). Lawrence v. Texas. LGBTQ Americans in the US Political System. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SB24DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA257&dq=lawrence+v+texas+Justice+Antonin+Scalia&ots=Vd-h9NM40s&sig=sK8vZ9ltG70NRIa2bByuXUChkPA

Gilkis, K. B. (2018, September 9). Lawrence v. Texas. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lawrence_v._texas

Levine, L. C. (2013). Justice Kennedy’s Gay Agenda: Romer, Lawrence, and the Struggle for Marriage Equality. Mcgeorge Law Review, 44(1). https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1151&context=mlr

Spindelman, M. (2013). Tyrone Garner’s Lawrence v. Texas. Michigan Law Review, 111(6), 1111-1144. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/agispt.20191108019607

Summers, C. J., & Kaczorowski, C. (2015). Bowers v. Hardwick/Lawrence v. Texas. http://glbtqarchive.com/ssh/bowers_v_hardwick_S.pdf

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