Senior U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, ruled on July 1 that a Michigan lesbian couple is entitled to a trial of their claim that the state adoption law, forbidding same-sex couples to jointly adopt children, and the Michigan Marriage Amendment (MMA), forbidding same-sex marriages, violate their rights under the 14th Amendment. Rejecting the state’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Friedman cited the Supreme … <Read More>
Lawrence v. Texas
Virginia Attorney General Goes to the Mat to Save Unconstitutional Sodomy Law
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider and overrule a decision by a three-judge panel of that court that held last month that Virginia’s sodomy law is facially unconstitutional. Citing the dissenting opinion by one member of the panel ruling in MacDonald v. Moose, Cuccinelli emphasized that the case involving an adult man who solicited a teenage girl to have oral sex, and argued that Virginia should … <Read More>
4th Circuit Panel Debates Scope of Lawrence v. Texas; Majority Strikes Virginia Sodomy Law
Did Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision holding that the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law violated the 14th Amendment Due Process clause, firmly establish a broad principle of federal constitutional law, or was it a narrow ruling that a state sodomy law cannot be used to prosecute private, consensual adult homosexual conduct? A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, debated that question in … <Read More>