Sexual intimacy

In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace. The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Texas Penal Code Ann. § 21.06(a) (2003) provides that a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defines deviate sexual intercourse as any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person, or the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object. The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider three questions. The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.

In August 1982, respondent Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of respondent's home. After a preliminary hearing, the District Attorney decided not to present the matter to the grand jury unless further evidence developed. Hardwick, who identified as a practicing homosexual, then brought suit in the Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. He asserted that the Georgia sodomy statute, as administered by the defendants, placed him in imminent danger of arrest. The District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, relying on Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Richmond, which the Supreme Court had summarily affirmed. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. The appellate court held that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights because his homosexual activity is a private and intimate association beyond the reach of state regulation by reason of the Ninth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It remanded for trial. John and Mary Doe were also plaintiffs in the action. They alleged that they wished to engage in sexual activity proscribed by the statute in the privacy of their home and that they had been chilled and deterred from engaging in such activity by both the existence of the statute and Hardwick's arrest. The District Court held that because they had neither sustained, nor were in immediate danger of sustaining, any direct injury from the enforcement of the statute, they did not have proper standing to maintain the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The Georgia statute at issue, Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-2, provides that a person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. A person convicted shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than twenty years. Because other Courts of Appeals had arrived at judgments contrary to that of the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court granted the Attorney General's petition for certiorari questioning the holding that the sodomy statute violates the fundamental rights of homosexuals.

In 1961 two appeals reached the Supreme Court from judgments of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors sustaining demurrers and dismissing actions brought by Dr. C. Lee Buxton, a Yale professor of obstetrics and gynecology who also served as medical director of the Planned Parenthood Center in New Haven, together with married patients Paul and Pauline Poe and Jane Doe. The complaints sought declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53-32 and 54-196. The women had consulted Dr. Buxton, who advised that contraceptive methods were medically indicated because of prior pregnancies that had resulted in stillbirths or critical illness. The statutes prevented them from obtaining or following such advice. The complaints further alleged that the New Haven County State's Attorney had made public statements threatening to prosecute violators of the statutes. The Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors held that the allegations failed to show any specific threat of prosecution against these plaintiffs. It also held that the plaintiffs had not committed or were about to commit acts subjecting them to liability. Therefore, the court dismissed the actions for lack of a justiciable controversy. The cases came to the United States Supreme Court on appeal. The Court noted probable jurisdiction. The challenged statutes had been on the books since 1879. In the more than eighty years since enactment, the only recorded prosecution was a 1940 test case against two doctors and a nurse at a birth-control clinic. That case ended when the State moved to dismiss the information after the state supreme court upheld the statutes. Contraceptives were commonly and openly sold in Connecticut drug stores. Yet no prosecutions for sale or use were recorded.

Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School. Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961. At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free. The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception. Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship. A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy. The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.

Tommie Granville and Brad Troxel never married but had two daughters, Isabelle and Natalie. Jenifer and Gary Troxel are Brad's parents and the paternal grandparents of the children. After Granville and Brad separated in 1991, Brad lived with his parents and regularly brought Isabelle and Natalie to their home for weekend visitation. Brad Troxel committed suicide in May 1993. The Troxels continued to see the children on a regular basis after his death. In October 1993 Granville informed the Troxels that she wished to limit their visitation to one short visit per month. In December 1993 the Troxels filed a petition in Washington Superior Court for Skagit County under Rev. Code Wash. § 26.10.160(3) seeking visitation rights. The statute provides that any person may petition the court for visitation rights at any time. The court may order visitation when it may serve the best interest of the child whether or not there has been any change of circumstances. The Troxels requested two weekends of overnight visitation per month and two weeks each summer. Granville proposed one day of visitation per month with no overnight stay. In 1995 the Superior Court ordered visitation one weekend per month, one week during the summer, and four hours on both grandparents' birthdays. Granville appealed. The Washington Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that nonparents lack standing to seek visitation under the statute unless a custody action is pending. The Washington Supreme Court granted review, held that the Troxels had standing, but affirmed on the ground that the statute unconstitutionally infringes on the fundamental right of parents to rear their children. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and affirmed the judgment.