Revisiting Romer v. Evans. “The state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”
In the ‘Nineties, Colorado Amendment 2 prevented local jurisdictions in that state from enacting or enforcing protections of gay people. The Supreme Court, in Romer v. Evans, struck that law down in memorable language.
“[Justice] Kennedy felt that there was no possible justification for the law other than a specific animus against the group that it targeted, since its virtually limitless scope dwarfed the justifications that the state provided. …
First, the amendment is at once too narrow and too broad, identifying persons by a single trait and then denying them the possibility of protection across the board. This disqualification of a class of persons from the right to obtain specific protection from the law is unprecedented and is itself a denial of equal protection in the most literal sense. … the amendment raises the inevitable inference that it is born of animosity toward the class that it affects. Amendment 2 cannot be said to be directed to an identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective. It is a status-based classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit.”
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Digitalcommons_dot_law adds:
“‘These are protections … against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society.’ The Court concluded that Amendment 2 classified lesbians and gay men, not to further a proper legislative purpose, but to make them unequal to everyone else. In so doing, the state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”
[https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=lawreview]
[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/]
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