From Romer to Obergefell: The Supreme Court’s Rewriting of the Grounds for Protecting LGBTQIA+ Rights. And What’s Next After Dobbs?

James Fleming will speak at “From Romer to Obergefell: The Supreme Court’s Rewriting of the Grounds for Protecting LGBTQIA+ Rights. And What’s Next After Dobbs?” put on by the Boston University LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff. The talk will be held via Zoom on on Friday, November 3 from 12–1:15 pm. 

In this talk, James E. Fleming, The Honorable Paul J. Liacos Professor of Law at BU Law, will analyze the grounds for protecting LGBTQ+ rights in US Supreme Court decisions from Romer v. Evans (1996) to Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Drawing on his recent book, Constructing Basic Liberties: A Defense of Substantive Due Process (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Fleming will argue that the Court’s decisions underwent a significant shift, from (1) asking whether the laws denying rights to LGBTQIA+ persons reflected illegitimate emotions—“animus” against or a “bare desire to harm” them—to (2) focusing on the social meaning of the denials—that the laws “demean their existence” and deny them the status and benefits of equal citizenship. He also will discuss why Justice Kennedy, the conservative justice who authored the majority opinions in these cases, conceived the unconstitutional laws as denials of liberty rather than, as many progressives urged, equality. Finally, he will consider what strategies are likely to be the most effective in resisting the U.S. Supreme Court’s retrenchment in protecting LGBTQ+ rights after its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overruled Roe v. Wade’s protection of pregnant persons’ right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy.

Sponsored by the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff and BU School of Law