List of LGBTQ-related cases in the United States Supreme Court

[2] It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter "nonmailable".

[3] In 1972, the Supreme Court dismissed the case of Baker v. Nelson, which effectively denied that homosexual couples have a constitutional right to get married.

In Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney of Richmond, a three-judge panel on the Eastern District of Virginia ruled, by 2 to 1, that the statute was not unconstitutional.

[10] Justices Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and John Paul Stevens noted that they would have set the case for full consideration.

An openly gay man challenged the sodomy law of Georgia based on an arrest he experienced in early July, 1982 in his home in Atlanta.

... Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' is, at best, facetious."

Nor are we inclined to take a more expansive view of our authority to discover new fundamental rights imbedded in the Due Process Clause.

There should be, therefore, great resistance to expand the substantive reach of those Clauses, particularly if it requires redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental.

Hardwick had asserted "that there must be a rational basis for the law, and that there is none in this case other than the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable.

[23][24][25][26] Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court, decided on June 28, 2000, that held that the constitutional right to freedom of association allowed the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to exclude a homosexual person from membership in spite of a state law requiring equal treatment of homosexuals in public accommodations.

[a][31][32] The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases had found the U.S. Constitution provides, even though it is not explicitly enumerated.

[33] It based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's own relationships and of American traditions of non-interference with any or all forms of private sexual activities between consenting adults.

Texas appealed to have the court rehear the case en banc, and in 2001 it overturned its prior judgment and upheld the law.

The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.

Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses, but was barred from doing so by Section 3 of DOMA.

[43][44] Prior to Obergefell, same-sex marriage had already been established by statute, court ruling, or voter initiative in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. 617 (2018), was a case in the Supreme Court of the United States that addressed whether owners of public accommodations can refuse certain services based on the First Amendment claims of free speech and free exercise of religion, and therefore be granted an exemption from laws ensuring non-discrimination in public accommodations—in particular, by refusing to provide creative services, such as making a custom wedding cake for the marriage of a gay couple, on the basis of the owner's religious beliefs.

The case dealt with Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, which refused to design a custom wedding cake for a gay couple based on the owner's religious beliefs.

The plaintiff, Gerald Bostock, was fired from his county job after he expressed interest in a gay softball league at work.

The lower courts followed the Eleventh Circuit's past precedent that Title VII did not cover employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a similar question of Title VII discrimination relating to transgender persons.

On July 31, 2013, she wrote to her employer, the Harris Funeral Homes group, so that they could be prepared for her decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery, telling them that after a vacation, she planned to return dressed in female attire that otherwise followed the employee handbook.

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. 522 (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania violated First Amendment rights of a Catholic foster care agency by refusing to renew the agency's contract unless it agreed to certify married same-sex couples as foster parents.