Case Citator › Lawrence v. Texas

Lawrence v. Texas

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
539 U.S. 558
Decided
Confirmed treatments
5
Flagged citations read
173 of 177
Citing cases (total)
1,450
Treatment dates
2005–2008
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Lawrence v. Texas remains binding, but its reach has been limited in the five contexts listed below. Of the 177 flagged citations, 173 were substantively read.
More on how this was screened

The confirmed treatments declined to extend Lawrence to adult incest, military administrative discharge, commercial sexual-device distribution, heightened scrutiny for military-service restrictions, and obscenity. The other readable opinions primarily applied Lawrence positively or reported its overruling of Bowers v. Hardwick; the Dobbs majority expressly disclaimed casting doubt on Lawrence.

The treatments below are confirmed; unread citations could still change the overall status.
Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case, except the ones whose text could not be retrieved.

1,450 later cases cite Lawrence v. Texas; 177 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 173 of them have been read, and the text of 4 citing opinions could not be retrieved, so those remain unread. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Lawrence v. Texas?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Seventh Circuit declined to extend Lawrence to create a fundamental right to consensual adult incest.

    Muth v. Frank · Seventh Circuit · filed

    Lawrence also did not announce, as Muth claims it did, a fundamental right, protected by the Constitution, for adults to engage in all manner of consensual sexual conduct, specifically in this case, incest. The Court certainly had not announced such a right prior to Lawrence, see Carey v. Population Servs. Int’l, 431 U.S. 678, 688 n. 5 & n. 17, 97 S.Ct. 2010, 52 L.Ed.2d 675 (1977) (“[T]he Court has not definitively answered the difficult question whether and to what extent the Constitution prohibits statutes regulating private consensual sexual behavior among adults, and we do not purport to answer that question now.”) (internal citation and punctuation omitted), and Laiorence, whatever its ramifications, does not, in and of itself, go so far.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The court declined to extend Lawrence to invalidate the military's administrative-discharge policy.

    Loomis v. United States · Court of Federal Claims · filed

    Additionally, Lawrence can be distinguished on the basis that discharge proceedings under DADT are not criminal in nature. Unlike the petitioners in Lawrence, plaintiff was eliminated from the military— the military equivalent of being fired — pursuant to an administrative, rather than criminal proceeding. We are, in any event, bound by Woodward, a Federal Circuit decision upholding the military’s former policy on due process grounds. We conclude that § 654 is rationally related to the end of achieving military success.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The court declined to extend Lawrence from private consensual conduct to Alabama's ban on commercial distribution of sexual devices.

    Williams v. King · N.D. Alabama · filed

    This case does not fit squarely within the mold of Lawrence. Thus, Lawrence’s holding— that public morality was not a sufficiently rational basis to support the Texas legislation in question there — does not apply to strike down the Alabama law here.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The court held that Lawrence did not require treating the asserted liberty interest in military service as fundamental or applying heightened scrutiny.

    Cook v. Rumsfeld · D. Massachusetts · filed

    For these reasons, though the matter is not free from doubt because of the ambiguity of the Lawrence opinion, I conclude that neither Lawrence nor any other relevant precedent requires treating the plaintiffs’ articulated liberty interest as a “fundamental” interest calling for heightened scrutiny in judicial review of the legislative decision-making.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The court declined to extend Lawrence beyond private sexual conduct to invalidate laws restricting obscene speech.

    United States v. Handley · S.D. Iowa · filed

    The Court concludes Lawrence does not render laws restricting obscene speech unconstitutional, and Defendant’s argument based on Lawrence fails.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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