Kramer Levin Plays Role in Historic Sodomy Ruling

Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas's law criminalizing certain consensual sexual conduct only between same-sex partners. Lawrence recognized that the constitutional right to privacy applies to the intimate lives of gay people, expressly overruling Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 decision in which the Court had dismissed such a claim as "at best, facetious." While Texas had defended its law purely as an expression of local morality, a few ideologically driven organizations attempted to justify it as a "public health" measure aimed at controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS. Our brief, prepared by partner Jeff Trachtman and associate Norm Simon, with valuable input from associates Eric Shimanoff and Michael Sternhell, responded to this argument on behalf of a consortium of mainstream public health and AIDS organizations, including the American Public Health Association. The brief, which Justice Souter referenced favorably during oral argument, demonstrated that the challenged law was so grossly over and underinclusive in the types of conduct it proscribed that it could not be taken seriously as a public health measure and that it actually undermined legitimate AIDS prevention efforts and inflicted harm on lesbians and gay men.