CIVIL RIGHTS

Legislation Affecting Homosexuals

In several states, efforts have been made to bar state and local laws giving preference to, or prohibiting discrimination against, homosexuals. In 1992, the voters in Colorado adopted an amendment to the state's constitution which precluded all legislative, executive, or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect the status of persons based on their "homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships." Similar measures, and challenges to those measures, have been undertaken in other states, including California, Idaho, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon.

Although the broader issue is certainly not completely settled, the Supreme Court has handed down a decision upholding the invalidation of Colorado's constitutional amendment by its state courts. Evans v. Romer, No. 94-1039 (U.S. May 20, 1996). The Court rejected the contention that the amendment merely puts gays and lesbians in the same position as all other persons, finding instead that, by withdrawing from homosexuals specific legal protection from the injuries caused by discrimination, the amendment puts homosexuals in a solitary class with respect to transactions and relations in both the private and governmental spheres. The Court further held that the amendment lacked a rational relationship to a legitimate state interest.

First, the Court stated that the amendment "has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group." Second, the Court found that "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."

John Buckley

Senior Attorney, Civil Rights

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