I had never really read much about Romer- interesting- especially Kennedy's opinion
The case was argued on October 10, 1995.[16] 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.[17]
Regarding the state's argument that Amendment 2 merely blocked gay people from receiving "special rights", Kennedy wrote:[2]
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.
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".[2] 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:[2]
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.[18]
And:[2]
[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.
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."[2] He elaborated: "It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort."[2]
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."[2] He elaborated: "It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort."[2]
