Larry Jegley v. Elena Picado…

Summary

The court affirmed summary judgment declaring Arkansas's same-sex sodomy statute unconstitutional as applied to private, consensual, noncommercial sexual intimacy between adults. It held that the appellees presented a justiciable controversy, that the Arkansas Constitution protects a fundamental right to privacy encompassing that conduct, and that the statute lacked a sufficient justification under the state's equal-protection guarantee. Justice Brown concurred on narrower privacy grounds, while Justice Thornton, joined by the chief justice, dissented because he would have found no justiciable controversy.