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The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. Its equal protection clause states that "No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
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In 1998, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were arrested in Lawrence’s Houston home and jailed overnight after officers responding to a false report found the men having sex.
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December 1998 Motions to cancel the charges against Lawrence and Garner as unconstitutional are denied by the Harris County Criminal Court. The men plead “nolo contendere,” preserving their right to pursue their constitutional challenge to the law.
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Court reverses the conviction of the two men and overturns Texas’s “Homosexual Conduct” law, declaring it unconstitutional.
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Texas’s highest criminal court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, refuses to hear Lambda Legal’s appeal.
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Lambda Legal asks U.S. Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of Texas’s “Homosexual Conduct” law. The case presents the high court with two independent constitutional claims that Lambda Legal urges it to review: one based on equal protection, the other based on rights of privacy and liberty.
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U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.
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Victory! In landmark ruling for lesbian and gay Americans’ civil rights, U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the “Homosexual Conduct” law.
