Criminal Justice

(NEW YORK, March 15, 2000) — Pledging to appeal, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund criticized a ruling from a Texas Court of Appeals Thursday that upheld the state’s “Homosexual Conduct” law and reinstated the conviction of two Houston men for having sex in the privacy of one man’s home.

“The government does not belong in people’s bedrooms policing consensual adult intimacy, nor can it have one rule for gay people and another one, granting more freedom, for non-gay people,” said Lambda Legal Director Ruth E. Harlow.

(NEW YORK, March 15, 2000) — A Texas Court of Appeals Thursday overturned a ruling that had found the state’s “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional, in a case involving the prosecution of two Houston men accused of having sex in the privacy of one man’s home.

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said it will continue its defense of the two men and pursue its challenge to Texas’ criminal ban on sexual relations between people of the same sex.

(Washington, Thursday, June 26, 2003) - In the most significant ruling ever for lesbian and gay Americans’ civil rights, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down Texas's "Homosexual Conduct” law, which criminalizes oral and anal sex by consenting gay couples and is used widely to justify discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

(NEW YORK, March 6, 2001) — Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund is urging a federal appeals court to uphold an order that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico pay plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees after a long, successful fight to strike down a Police Department rule that forbade officers from associating in any context with any gay person.

(Washington, D.C., October 2, 2003) -- Just months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all laws prohibiting consensual sodomy in the nation, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network are urging the military’s highest court to strike a similar law from its code of conduct.

s(Los Angeles, October 14, 2003) - In an important case for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered immigrants, Lambda Legal is urging the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington, DC, to grant asylum to a man who faced severe anti-gay persecution in Mexico -- but was rejected for asylum by a California immigration judge who said he didn't seem gay and could hide his sexual orientation to avoid persecution.

(Virginia Beach, Virginia, October 29, 2003) - At a hearing in Virginia state court today, Lambda Legal will help defend a man who is charged with solicitation of sodomy despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last summer that clearly struck down all remaining sodomy laws in the nation.

(ATLANTA, July 7, 2000) —Defying the national trend overturning laws that criminalize private consensual sex between adults, the Louisiana Supreme Court has upheld the state’s “crime against nature” statute that carries penalties of up to five years in prison, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said.

(NEW YORK, June 8, 2000) — A Texas appellate court on Thursday declared the state’s “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional, overturning the convictions of two men arrested by Houston police in an apartment for having consensual sex, said Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which defended the men.

(NEW YORK, June 8, 2000) —The Texas Court of Appeals Thursday overturned the state’s anti-gay “Homosexual Conduct” Law, reversing convictions of two Houston men arrested for allegedly having sex in the bedroom of one man’s home, said Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which challenged the law and represented the pair.

In a teleconference at 10 a.m. CDT, Thursday, June 8, Lambda Staff Attorney Suzanne B. Goldberg, with Lambda Cooperating Attorney Mitchell Katine of the Houston law firm Williams, Birnberg & Anderson, will discuss the ruling.