Romer v. Evans

Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with civil rights and state laws. The Court gave its ruling on May 20, 1996 against an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect homosexual citizens from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Dissent

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an impassioned dissent which was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. Scalia wrote:

Related Topics:
Antonin Scalia - William H. Rehnquist - Clarence Thomas

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: a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws. That objective, and the means chosen to achieve it, are unimpeachable under any constitutional doctrine hitherto pronounced.

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Scalia argued that Amendment 2 did not deny homosexuals access to the political process but merely made it more difficult to enact laws that they favored. He noted that the majority's result stood in flat contradiction to the court's earlier decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), in which it had ruled that laws outlawing sodomy are not unconstitutional. That was because Bowers had rejected a rational-basis challenge to sodomy laws on the grounds that traditional moral disapproval furnished such a rational basis. Scalia noted:

Related Topics:
Bowers v. Hardwick - 1986 - Sodomy

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:If it is rational to criminalize the conduct, surely it is rational to deny special favor and protection to those with a self-avowed tendency or desire to engage in the conduct.

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Against what he saw as judicial activism, he wrote:

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:Since the Constitution of the United States says nothing about this subject , it is left to be resolved by normal democratic means, including the democratic adoption of provisions in state constitutions.

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