By: Joseph Bozzutti
In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court overruled
Bowers v. Hardwick and held that homosexuals enjoy a
constitutionally protected right to engage in private intimate
conduct. Justice Scalia’s dissent was very critical of the
majority opinion and predicted that the scope of the Court’s ruling
left all morals-based legislation vulnerable to
attack. Specifically, Scalia predicted that state laws against
same-sex marriage, bestiality, and bigamy, among other things, were
“called into question” by the Court’s expansive decision. This
remains to be seen. Recently, however, the storm that Scalia
forecasted has reared its ugly head in the latest challenge to
Utah’s prohibition of polygamy. The case is captioned
Bronson v. Swensen and is venued in the United States
District Court for the District of Utah.
This Note employs the Bronson v. Swensen case as the
backdrop for an examination into the constitutionality of polygamy
after Lawrence v. Texas, concluding that, while polygamy
statutes need not be overturned after Lawrence, the
Lawrence decision may very well have left all morals-based
legislation vulnerable to constitutional attack.