# Romer v. Evans (1996) Decided **May 20, 1996**, 6–3 (Kennedy joined by Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer). The Supreme Court struck down **Colorado's Amendment 2** — a 1992 voter-approved state constitutional amendment that would have prohibited any city, county, or state government action protecting people on the basis of sexual orientation. The decision was the **first Supreme Court victory for gay-rights advocates** and the doctrinal foundation for everything that came after. ## What Amendment 2 Did [[Colorado Amendment 2]], passed by 53% of voters in November 1992, would have: - **Repealed** existing local non-discrimination ordinances in Aspen, Boulder, and Denver that protected gay residents in employment, housing, and public accommodations - **Prohibited** any future state, county, or municipal protections for gay, lesbian, or bisexual people - **Required** a future statewide constitutional amendment to undo any of the above The amendment was the high-water mark of the early-1990s anti-gay state-ballot-measure wave, modeled on a 1992 Oregon ballot measure (defeated) and intended to be the template for similar amendments nationwide. ## The Holding [[Justice Anthony Kennedy]]'s majority opinion held that Amendment 2 violated the **Equal Protection Clause** of the [[Fourteenth Amendment]]. The opinion's reasoning was unusually structural — Kennedy framed the amendment not as a denial of a particular substantive right, but as a denial of **equal access to the political process**: > Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. The opinion applied **rational-basis review** — the most deferential level of constitutional scrutiny — but concluded the amendment failed even that low bar because "its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects." ## Scalia's Dissent Justice [[Antonin Scalia]]'s dissent (joined by Rehnquist, Thomas) attacked the majority for inventing a new constitutional protection. His framing — that the Court was siding with the "elite class" of pro-gay coastal urban professionals against the "ordinary Americans" of Colorado — would become the standard right-wing critique of subsequent gay-rights decisions. ## Place in the Vault *Romer* established the doctrinal foundation that LGBTQ legal advocates built on for the next two decades: - **The "animus principle"** — that legislation motivated by hostility toward a particular group, rather than legitimate governmental interest, violates equal protection - **The frame** that anti-gay legislation is uniquely structural — singling out one class for legal disability — and thus reviewable even under deferential standards - **Kennedy's authorship** — which made him the swing-vote architect of the major LGBTQ rights decisions through *Obergefell* (2015) The doctrinal line from *Romer* (1996) → [[Lawrence v. Texas]] (2003) → *Windsor* (2013) → [[Obergefell v. Hodges]] (2015) is the canonical Kennedy-era LGBTQ-rights jurisprudence, all authored by the same Justice. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Lawrence v. Texas]] - [[Lambda Legal]]