Romer v. Evans

Romer v. Evans, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 20, 1996, voided (6–3) an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that prohibited laws protecting the rights of homosexuals. It was the first case in which the court declared that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violated constitutionally protected rights. The ruling came on the heels of the court’s decision in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. (1995), which upheld the right of parade organizers to exclude homosexual groups. Gay rights activists viewed the Romer decision as providing a glimmer of hope that the court might be moving away from its earlier conservative stance on gay rights issues.

Background

The political activity of gay and lesbian groups in Colorado had succeeded on several fronts in the 1970s and ’80s. Numerous municipalities passed ordinances banning discrimination in jobs and housing on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, and the state legislature had repealed its sodomy statute so that gay sexual activity was no longer subject to criminal penalties. In the late 1980s, however, the city of Colorado Springs saw an influx of socially conservative evangelical Christian groups that opposed these legal and political gains made by homosexuals. These groups did not merely oppose the local laws and work to repeal them, but, by circulating and signing petitions, they succeeded in placing a state constitutional amendment (Amendment 2) on the ballot that would specifically repeal any state or local law that protected people who were “Homosexual, Lesbian or [of] Bisexual Orientation” and would prohibit the passage of any legislation in the future that would protect such people in their “conduct, practices or relationships.”

In November 1992, 53 percent of the voters of Colorado approved the controversial amendment. Richard G. Evans, an administrator in Denver (one of the cities whose antidiscrimination laws had just been voided), sued Roy Romer, the governor of Colorado, to have Amendment 2 nullified as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause (which prohibits the states from denying to any person “the equal protection of the laws”). The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with the trial court that Amendment 2 was unconstitutional; the state appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and oral arguments were heard on October 10, 1995.

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Majority opinion

Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for six of the justices—himself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Hackett Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer—in striking down Amendment 2 and affirming the decision of the Colorado court. The opening sentence of his opinion showed exactly where the court was going:

One century ago, the first Justice Harlan admonished this Court that the Constitution ‘neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.’ Unheeded then, those words now are understood to state a commitment to the law’s neutrality where the rights of persons are at stake. The Equal Protection Clause enforces this principle and today requires us to hold invalid [Amendment 2].

Kennedy seemed especially outraged by the notion that the law cut off any avenue by which homosexuals could seek political or judicial recourse against discrimination. Moreover, a fair reading of the wording in Amendment 2 could lead to the conclusion that “it deprives gays and lesbians even of the protection of general laws and policies that prohibit arbitrary discrimination in governmental and private settings.” In essence, Kennedy argued, the amendment excluded gays and lesbians from the social and political order. Not once in his opinion did Kennedy refer to Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which had upheld Georgia’s antisodomy law, though he did refer to many historic civil rights cases.

Dissenting opinion

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, referred almost immediately to Bowers v. Hardwick in writing his dissent, and he saw no harm in what he described as “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, he argued, was “unimpeachable under any constitutional doctrine.” He then attacked Kennedy’s opinion on a point-by-point basis, but underlying the entire dissent was a belief that what was really at issue was not an effort to deny some group equal rights but the “reasonable effort [of Coloradans] to preserve traditional American moral values.” Scalia also maintained that Amendment 2 did not deny equal treatment under the law to homosexuals but only prohibited their preferential protection. Scalia felt that Bowers should have been the deciding precedent, not the civil rights cases cited by Kennedy.

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Aftermath

Romer v. Evans is seen by many as a major turning point in the legal recognition of gay rights. Kennedy gave advocates what they had been seeking all along: recognition that prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation was no more acceptable under the Constitution than discrimination on the basis of race or religion.

Even though a closely divided Supreme Court in 2000 would uphold the right of the Boy Scouts to keep gays out of leadership positions (Boy Scouts of America v. Dale), Romer showed that a majority of the court no longer shared the sentiment that had seemingly animated Bowers. Gay and lesbian groups now believed that they could secure a reversal of Bowers, and they set out to find the right test case. Lawrence v. Texas would serve just that purpose in 2003.