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.

Notes

Since Romer stood in obvious tension with the Court's earlier decision in Bowers, it laid the groundwork for 2003's Lawrence v. Texas (539 U.S. 558) which overturned Bowers. Romer, however, has not been widely cited beyond Lawrence, no doubt because Kennedy emphasized the "special" nature of Amendment 2 and refused to apply traditional rational-basis analysis to the Colorado law.

Related Topics:
2003 - Lawrence v. Texas

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In this case, the court lined up in almost the same way as in Lawrence, though in Lawrence Justice O'Connor concurred in the judgement on different grounds.

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Ironically, Roy Romer was on record as opposing Amendment 2; his name was on the suit as defendant and the appellant solely due to his position as governor of Colorado.

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