Select Landmark Supreme Court Cases Affecting LGBTQ Rights
Back in 1969 when the Stonewall Uprising took place, no state granted any form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships, and there were no laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.?While 1964 had previously provided Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, applying that law to LGBTQ rights came decades later.
Many of the consequential landmark Supreme Court decisions affecting the LGBTQ community have come within the last 30 years.?Those cases usually focused on fundamental constitutional issues such as due process, equal protection and freedom of association.?Some cases involved the application of federal laws to LGBTQ rights, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.?Interestingly, Justice Anthony Kennedy played a particularly significant role in this arena, having written the majority opinion in five significant Supreme Courts cases involving LGBTQ issues.
Below is an overview of some significant Supreme Court cases involving the rights of the LGBTQ community, as provided by the Library of Congress and their Selected Legal Milestones for LGBTQ issues :
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down an amendment to the Colorado State Constitution ("Amendment 2"), which would not allow any statute, regulation, or executive action that would protect "homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships," finding that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court ruled, in an opinion drafted by Justice Kennedy, that Amendment 2 "is a status-based enactment divorced from any factual context from which we could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests; it is a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit. '[C]lass legislation . . . [is] obnoxious to the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . .'?Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S., at 24."
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In this video, Jim Obergefell and Debbie Cenziper discuss their new book, "Love Wins." Obergefell was the named plaintiff in?Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 landmark marriage equality ruling that the Supreme Court issued just a year prior. The opinion in the?Obergefell?case can be found on the?Supreme Court website .
This case centered around a bakery owner refusing to create a cake for a gay couple's wedding reception, due to "his religious opposition to same-sex marriages." The owner was found to have violated Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC). As described by?Oyez.com , the Supreme Court held that "the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's conduct in evaluating a cake shop owner's reasons for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple violated the Free Exercise Clause," and overturned the CCRC's ruling. The Court stated that under?the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution , the CCRC was required to be "neutral toward and tolerant of" the cake shop owner’s religious beliefs, and did not meet all of the "governmental neutrality" factors.
*** Just today, June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who, out of religious objections, is opposed to creating websites to celebrate same-sex weddings.?The decision (6-3) was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who also drafted the majority opinion three (3) years ago in Bostock v. Clayton County.?(See below)?The pendulum continues to swing back and forth as the Supreme Court continues to shape LBGTQ rights in this country.***
In this case, several plaintiffs who were fired after their employers learned of their membership in the LGBTQ+ community claimed they had been subjected to discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(a)). The conflict centered around the language of Title VII of the Act, which makes it “unlawful...for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual...because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Specifically, the Court was asked to rule on whether the "sex" component of Title VII protected people who were discriminated against by their employer due to their "homosexuality or transgender status." In a majority opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court determined that Title VII did, stating: "The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."