Warning
Info
Warning
Info
Simple English definitions for legal terms
Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)
Read a random definition: driving while intoxicated (DWI)
A quick definition of Bowers v. Hardwick (1986):
Bowers v. Hardwick was a court case in 1986 where the Supreme Court had to decide if it was okay for the state of Georgia to make it illegal for people to have sex with someone of the same gender. Hardwick, a gay man, was arrested for having consensual sex with another man in his home. He sued Georgia, saying the law was unconstitutional and that he could be arrested again in the future. The Supreme Court said that because most states had laws against gay sex, it wasn't a right protected by the Constitution. They said the law was okay, and Hardwick lost the case. However, in 2003, the Supreme Court changed their minds and said that it was unconstitutional to make gay sex illegal in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.A more thorough explanation:
Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) was a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court that dealt with the issue of whether a person had a Constitutional right to engage in homosexual sex. In this case, a man named Hardwick was arrested for engaging in consensual sex with another man in his home. Georgia had passed a law that criminalized both oral and anal sex, and Hardwick argued that the law was unconstitutional and that he was at risk of future arrest if the law remained in effect.
The Court considered that homosexual sodomy was criminal under the common law at the nation’s founding, as well as in most states at the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. At one point, all 50 states had laws against homosexual sodomy, and at the time of Bowers, almost half of the states and the District of Columbia still outlawed the practice. As such, the Court determined that homosexual sodomy was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” nor “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Thus, the right to privacy did not extend to homosexual sodomy as it was not a fundamental right. Under this reasoning, the statute need only pass the rational basis test of scrutiny, so the Court of Appeals’ decision was reversed.
The decision in Bowers was narrow, with five justices voting to uphold the law and four voting against it. The Supreme Court would directly overrule the decision in 2003 in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.
Example: Hardwick was arrested for engaging in consensual sex with another man in his home, which was criminalized under Georgia law. He argued that the law was unconstitutional and that he was at risk of future arrest if the law remained in effect. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law, stating that homosexual sodomy was not a fundamental right and therefore not protected under the right to privacy.