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gay teen rights has been put back to the appealate courts
On Friday, one day after striking down sodomy laws in the Lawrence v. Texas case, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed the Kansas Court of Appeals to revisit an earlier case that raises the issue of discriminatory treatment of a gay man.
The high court vacated the decision in the case of Matthew Limon, a teenager who received a 17-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a younger teen in the residential boarding school they both attended. The Kansas court upheld the sentence, and the Kansas Supreme Court declined to intervene.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case for review, but the justices had not responded one way or another to the ACLU's request. Although the high court did not accept review, the message they sent to the Kansas court one day after the Lawrence decision was clear: Reduce the sentence.
Under a Kansas statute, the "Romeo and Juliet Law," heterosexual teens who are caught having consensual sex are treated as an exceptional case under the laws that govern underage sexual activity. Provided the miscreants are under 19, and provided the younger participant is between 14 and 16 and no more than four years separate their ages, the teens are subject to a maximum sentence of one year.
Homosexual teens involved in the same activity, however, are given no leeway, and prosecuted as adults. Matthew Limon received an even harsher sentence than usual, due to a previous incident of this sort on his juvenile record. As such, the youth was facing nearly two decades behind bars for the "crime" of having consensual oral sex with another boy. Limon had just turned 18 at the time of the encounter, while the other boy was about to turn 15.
The case had one constitutional claim in common with the challenge to the Texas sodomy law, namely that the statute punished same-sex couples more severely than heterosexual couples for no apparent logical reason. The ACLU did not argue that Kansas's treatment of underage partners violated their right to privacy.
Although Thursday's majority opinion was based on the right to privacy, and not the right to equal protection at issue here, the court made clear that gay men and women stand on an equal constitutional footing with heterosexuals, and that morality alone cannot justify discriminatory laws.
In a press release Friday, ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project Litigation Director James Esseks said the Lawrence ruling means that "states can no longer get away with ... unequal treatment. We hope that this is the first of many wrongs that yesterday's ruling will correct."
Posted June 27, 2003
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