Editing Romer v. Evans (section)

==U.S. Supreme Court ruling==
The case was argued on October 10, 1995.<ref>{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=nO093wNz1PoC&pg=PT286 |title= The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions |last= Hall |first= Kermit |publisher= [[Oxford University Press]] |page= 286 |isbn= 978-0195379396 |year= 2009 |via= Google Books}}</ref> On May 20, 1996, the court ruled 6–3 that Colorado's Amendment 2 was unconstitutional, though on different reasoning from the Colorado courts. Justice [[Anthony Kennedy]] wrote the majority opinion, and was joined by [[John Paul Stevens]], [[Sandra Day O'Connor]], [[David Souter]], [[Ruth Bader Ginsburg]], and [[Stephen Breyer]]. The Court majority held that the Colorado constitutional amendment targeting homosexuals based upon animosity lacked a rational relation to any legitimate governmental purpose.<ref name=opinion/>

Regarding the state's argument that Amendment 2 blocked homosexuals merely from receiving "special rights", Kennedy wrote:

{{quote|Amendment 2's reach may not be limited to specific laws passed for the benefit of gays and lesbians. It is a fair, if not necessary, inference from the broad language of the amendment that it deprives gays and lesbians even of the protection of general laws and policies that prohibit arbitrary discrimination in governmental and private settings. ... The state court did not decide whether the amendment has this effect, however, and neither need we.<ref>''Romer'', 517 U.S. at 630.</ref>}}

While leaving that question unresolved by his opinion, Kennedy concluded that the amendment imposed a special disability upon homosexuals by forbidding them to seek safeguards "without constraint".<ref name=opinion /> Instead of applying "[[strict scrutiny]]" to Amendment 2 (as the Colorado Supreme Court had done), Kennedy wrote that it did not even meet the much lower requirement of having a rational relationship to a legitimate government purpose:<ref>''Romer'', 517 U.S. at 632.</ref>

{{quote|Its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/evidence/PX0619.pdf |title= Chapter 14: Other Indicia of Animus Against LGBT People by State and Local Officials, 1980–Present |publisher= United States District Court for the Northern District of California |date= June 30, 2013 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120305041055/https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/evidence/PX0619.pdf |archive-date= March 5, 2012 |df= mdy-all }}</ref>}}

And:

{{quote|[Amendment 2] is at once too narrow and too broad. It identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.<ref name=opinion />}}

Kennedy did not go into depth in rejecting the claims put forward in support of the law (e.g. protecting the rights of landlords to evict gay tenants if they found homosexuality morally offensive), instead holding that the law was so unique as to "confound this normal process of judicial review" and "defies ... conventional inquiry."<ref name=opinion />  He elaborated:  "It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort."<ref name=opinion />

Finding that "laws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected," the Court inferred that the passage of Amendment 2 was born of a "bare ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group".<ref name=opinion />  The Court added: "[I]f the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a ''legitimate'' governmental interest."(emphasis added)<ref>''Romer'', 517 U.S. at 634-35 (citing {{ussc|name=Dep't of Agriculture v. Moreno|link=Department of Agriculture v. Moreno|volume=413|page=528|pin=534|year=1973}}).</ref> The majority opinion in ''Romer'' neither mentioned nor overruled the Court's prior opinion in ''Bowers v. Hardwick'',<ref name=Bowers/> which allowed outright bans on homosexual activity.<ref>{{cite book |last= Greve |first= Michael |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=x3kViV5h-O0C&pg=PA100 |title= Real Federalism: Why It Matters, How It Could Happen |page= 100 |publisher= American Enterprise Institute |year= 1999 |via= Google Books|isbn= 9780844741000 }}</ref>