Romer v. Evans
The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment that blocked the state and its cities from ever passing laws protecting gay, lesbian, or bisexual people from discrimination, ruling that singling out one group this way violates the Constitution's promise of equal treatment.
The decision marked the first time the Court held that a law targeting gay people for disfavored treatment failed even the most lenient constitutional test, because the amendment seemed driven by hostility toward the group rather than any legitimate government purpose.
“It 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.”
The Court's core reasoning for why Amendment 2 fails rational-basis review.
How it got here: A Colorado trial court enjoined the amendment; the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed twice on different grounds; the state sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Following a wave of local ordinances in Aspen, Boulder, and Denver banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, Colorado voters adopted "Amendment 2" in 1992, a state constitutional provision blocking any state or local government action protecting gay, lesbian, or bisexual people from discrimination. A group of gay individuals, government employees, and the affected cities sued Governor Romer and state officials to block its enforcement.
The question before the Court
Could Colorado amend its state constitution to bar any city or state law from ever protecting gay, lesbian, or bisexual people from discrimination?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Colorado could not adopt such a sweeping constitutional amendment. Amendment 2 didn't just repeal existing local antidiscrimination ordinances; it barred any future government action, at any level, from ever protecting gay, lesbian, or bisexual people from discrimination, unless the state constitution itself were amended again. The Court found this uniquely broad and permanent disadvantage aimed at one group failed even the most forgiving constitutional test, because no legitimate government purpose could explain a law that sweeping.
The Court concluded the amendment's only plausible explanation was hostility toward gay people as a class, and a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group can never count as a legitimate government interest. It therefore held the amendment violated the Equal Protection Clause and affirmed the Colorado Supreme Court's judgment blocking its enforcement.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Cities and states can continue to pass antidiscrimination laws covering sexual orientation without running into a constitutional bar unique to that group. The ruling gave gay rights advocates a significant legal foothold and signaled that laws singling out gay people for exclusion from ordinary legal protections would face serious constitutional scrutiny going forward.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision. Amendment 2 cannot be enforced, and Colorado's antidiscrimination ordinances in Aspen, Boulder, and Denver remain valid. The ruling does not resolve whether laws affecting gay people generally require heightened scrutiny, leaving that question for future cases, but it establishes that laws singling out gay people for blanket exclusion from legal protection can fail rational-basis review.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether gay people constitute a suspect or quasi-suspect class entitled to heightened scrutiny, nor whether there is a fundamental right to participate equally in the political process. It also left open how broadly the amendment might have affected general antidiscrimination laws, since it didn't need to resolve that question to decide the case.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Scalia
“The Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite.”Scalia's central objection that the majority misread a legitimate cultural dispute as bare hostility.
Justice Scalia argued the majority mistook a legitimate moral and political dispute for unconstitutional animus. He contended Amendment 2 was a reasonable, democratic response by a majority seeking to preserve traditional sexual morality against a politically powerful minority, and that it merely denied preferential treatment rather than imposing any substantive disadvantage. He argued Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld criminalizing homosexual conduct, supplied an obvious rational basis for the amendment, and that requiring statewide rather than local votes on such matters is a normal feature of democracy, not a constitutional violation.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied rational-basis review, the most lenient constitutional test, under which a law is upheld if it bears a reasonable connection to some legitimate government purpose, since no fundamental right or suspect classification was at issue.
- The Court found Amendment 2 unusual because it imposed a broad, undifferentiated disadvantage on a single group defined by one trait, rather than a narrow measure tied to an identifiable government interest, making it harder to see any legitimate link between the classification and its goal.
- Because the amendment's sweep was so much broader than any of the state's stated justifications -- protecting freedom of association and conserving anti-discrimination enforcement resources -- the Court concluded the law could not be explained by those interests.
- The Court reasoned that when a law's breadth so far exceeds its stated purposes, the most plausible explanation is animosity toward the affected group, and a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group is never a legitimate government interest.
- Applying this reasoning, the Court concluded Amendment 2 was a status-based classification aimed at making gay people unequal to everyone else rather than advancing any legitimate objective, so it failed even rational-basis review.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Davis v. Beason (133 U.S. 333)
The Court said reliance on this 1890 case upholding denial of voting rights to polygamists was misplaced and partly outdated.