Unconstitutional Overbreadth of the Texas Sodomy Statute

Abstract

Summarizes the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas case Buchanan v. Batchelor, which ruled Texas’s sodomy law unconstitutional in so far as is prescribes prosecution of the private acts of married, consenting adults. The author proposes that the Texas Legislature, in reforming the law to comply with the constitutional mandate of the court, look to the New York statute for “deviate sexual intercourse.” The New York statute is nearly identical to Texas’s sodomy law, except including an exception carved out for marital sexual activity. The author believes that this would satisfy the constitutional protection of marital privacy established in Griswold v. Connecticut.