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Which justices have expressed opinions on revisiting Lawrence vs Texas?
Executive Summary
The available analyses show that the only current Supreme Court justice who has publicly urged reconsideration of Lawrence v. Texas is Justice Clarence Thomas, notably in his concurrence to the Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022; historical records confirm other justices took positions in the original 2003 decision but did not publicly press for revisiting the case later. The material distinguishes between the justices’ 2003 votes and opinions in Lawrence and later signals that Thomas uniquely advocated revisiting Lawrence after Dobbs [1] [2] [3].
1. Who openly called for Lawrence to be revisited — and why that matters
The clearest, most recent claim in the dataset is that Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly suggested the Court should reconsider Lawrence v. Texas in the wake of the Court’s June 24, 2022 Dobbs decision; Thomas wrote a concurrence urging reconsideration of prior substantive due‑process precedents and singled out Lawrence by name [1]. This is significant because Thomas had been the lone dissenter in the 2003 Lawrence decision and has long rejected substantive due‑process protections for private sexual conduct, a posture that makes his 2022 call materially different from the historical record of the majority and dissent in the original case. The single‑justice push matters procedurally: one justice’s concurrence signals an appetite to revisit precedent, but it does not compel the Court to do so without a case squarely presenting the issue [1].
2. What the 2003 opinions actually said — the full cast of voices
The 2003 Lawrence decision produced a majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy striking down the Texas sodomy statute and overturning Bowers v. Hardwick, with Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer joining; Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, while Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were also part of the Court’s constellation of views around that period [3] [4]. The historical opinions show a split: the majority grounded the ruling in liberty interests, while dissenters argued against recognizing a constitutional right to private homosexual conduct. These 2003 alignments explain why calls to revisit the ruling attract close attention — they would reverse a decision grounded in a coalition of justices that included several who are no longer on the Court [3] [2].
3. Recent reporting and the lone-justice narrative
Contemporary reporting extracted in the provided analyses highlights that KXAN and similar outlets identify Thomas as the sole current justice who has publicly sought rehearing of Lawrence [1]. The reporting frames Thomas’s 2022 concurrence as part of a broader doctrinal campaign to challenge substantive due‑process precedents post‑Dobbs, with commentators noting he explicitly mentioned Lawrence among cases he thought merited reconsideration. The dataset contains no contemporaneous evidence that any other sitting justice has publicly voiced an intent to overturn or revisit Lawrence after 2003; sources focusing on Lawrence’s history do not record subsequent public statements by other justices in favor of revisiting it [1] [5].
4. Differentiating historical dissent from contemporary calls to overturn
Multiple sources in the provided analyses list the justices who wrote in 2003 — Scalia and Thomas as dissenters, Kennedy authoring the majority — but they do not equate those dissents with recent advocacy to revisit the case [2] [3]. A historical dissent does not automatically translate into a later public campaign to overturn precedent. The key factual distinction in the dataset is temporal: the bulk of named justices (Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas, O’Connor) held positions at the time of decision, but only Thomas is documented here as publicly urging renewed review after Dobbs [3] [4] [1]. This distinction is crucial for readers interpreting the scope of present Court interest in reopening Lawrence.
5. Competing readings and potential agendas in the sources
The materials reveal potential agenda signals: local and explanatory outlets emphasize Thomas’s concurrence as part of a doctrinal shift after Dobbs, which could reflect editorial framing about the Court’s direction on substantive due‑process [1]. Meanwhile, encyclopedic and case‑law summaries catalog the 2003 votes without pushing a present‑day narrative [6] [3] [4]. Readers should note that coverage which foregrounds Thomas’s call may be highlighting broader concerns about rollback of privacy rights, whereas neutral legal summaries stress the historical lineup; both angles are factually consistent with the dataset but serve different explanatory purposes [1] [3].
6. Bottom line: who to watch going forward
Based on the provided analyses, the empirically supported answer is narrow and concrete: Justice Clarence Thomas has publicly sought reconsideration of Lawrence v. Texas, notably in June 2022, and is the only current justice in these materials documented as doing so; other justices are recorded for their 2003 positions but are not shown here to have called for rehearing in recent years [1] [2] [3]. Future developments depend on litigants presenting a case that squarely raises Lawrence’s holdings; absent that, a single justice’s concurrence signals interest but does not by itself alter precedent.