Supreme Court Upholds Gay and Lesbian Privacy Rights

Read the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas

Read the Lawyers Committee's amicus curiae brief in the case

NEW YORK - In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a discriminatory Texas law that criminalized private sexual intimacy by consenting same-sex adults.

“In vindicating the privacy rights of gay and lesbian Americans, the Court relied, ‘in part, on values we share with a wider civilization,’” said Mike Posner, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

Citing an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief filed by the Lawyers Committee and several others in the case, the Court emphasized that the right to sexual privacy “has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries.” The brief explicitly urged the Court to take into account the analogous decisions of foreign and international courts which have invalidated similar laws on the grounds that they violate rights of privacy and equal protection.

The brief was written by Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School and a member of the Lawyers Committee’s Board of Directors, along with the law firm of Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett, LLP. We were joined in the brief by other human rights organizations and by Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.