We Are Challenging Idaho's Unconstitutional Sodomy Law


My office is continuing our fight against unconstitutional “sodomy laws,” which criminalize oral and anal sex among mutually consenting adults.

This time, the fight takes us to Idaho.

“Sodomy laws” shouldn’t exist anywhere in the United States, as the Supreme Court declared these invasive, puritanical conventions unconstitutional almost two decades ago. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court found that these laws constitute an intrusion on privacy, dignity, and autonomy; all of which the Fourteenth Amendment protects. (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558). Despite this ruling, eight stubborn states still cling to their unconstitutional sodomy laws.

Idaho is one of those states. Its law (Idaho Code § 18-6605) makes it a crime to have oral or anal sex, in any context. Idaho even requires people who are convicted of having oral or anal sex to register as sex offenders—displaying their pictures and home addresses on a public website, opening them to harassment, violence, and pointless everyday burdens like being banned from certain public spaces.


Idaho’s sex offender law also requires people with convictions from other states to register in Idaho if they have a conviction from another state that is similar enough to a registrable crime in Idaho—no matter what the “crime,” or how old the conviction.

Today, together with the ACLU of Idaho and Debra Groberg (of Boise’s Nevin, Benjamin, McKay, and Bartlett ) we filed a case challenging Idaho’s continued enforcement of the law generally and through the sex offender registry.

This is the second case my office has filed challenging state’s attempts to enforce pre-Lawrence, so-called “sodomy” convictions through sex offender registries.