Supreme Court’s Romer v. Evans Ruling Turns 30, Reshaping Colorado and National LGBTQ+ Law
Why It Matters
Three decades after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Romer v. Evans, the decision remains a defining moment in American constitutional law — one that reshaped Colorado’s national image, altered the trajectory of the state’s politics, and set off a long-running legal and cultural debate over religious liberty versus anti-discrimination protections that continues today.
What Happened
On May 20, 1996, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling striking down Colorado’s Amendment 2, a ballot measure voters had approved in 1992 with 53 percent of the vote. The measure barred local governments from enacting ordinances that prohibited discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people — effectively nullifying protections that several Colorado cities and counties had already put in place.
The amendment’s passage sparked a national boycott of Colorado and earned the state the unflattering label “The Hate State.” Its defeat at the Supreme Court level marked what legal observers have called the first in a series of major rulings affirming equal rights under the law regardless of sexual orientation.
Jenny Pizer, an attorney at Lambda Legal — an organization involved in litigating the case — learned of the ruling that morning from her mother, who was calling in tears from Denver. Pizer described the atmosphere at the office that day as one of “relief, joy, satisfaction, vindication.”
In Denver, attorney Mary Celeste, who helped coordinate the case through the Colorado Legal Initiatives Project, quickly organized a rally on the steps of the state Capitol following the decision. She estimated roughly 4,000 people attended. The lead plaintiff attorney was Jean Dubofsky, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice.
By the Numbers
- 53% — Share of Colorado voters who approved Amendment 2 in 1992
- 6-3 — The Supreme Court’s margin in striking down the measure
- ~4,000 — Estimated attendees at the Capitol rally following the ruling
- 30 years — Time elapsed since the May 20, 1996 decision
- Multiple — Number of subsequent Supreme Court cases involving Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws and competing religious liberty claims
Zoom Out
The Romer decision did not close the book on Colorado’s role in national legal disputes over these issues. In the years that followed, several additional cases originating in Colorado reached the Supreme Court — cases in which the Court ruled that the state’s anti-discrimination protections infringed on the free speech and religious liberty rights of individuals who object to same-sex relationships on religious grounds.
Conservative religious organizations drew a strategic lesson from the 1996 loss, according to William Schultz, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Chicago and author of a book examining how Colorado Springs became a center of evangelical conservatism. Those groups concluded, Schultz said, “that winning the Supreme Court is a lot more important than winning the popular vote” — a calculation that contributed to a decades-long effort to reshape the federal judiciary, culminating in the current conservative supermajority on the Court.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in dissent in the Romer case, used the German term Kulturkampf — culture war — to describe the conflict, a phrase that has since become a staple of American political discourse. Redistricting battles in Alabama and South Carolina illustrate how court rulings continue to reshape political maps and electoral outcomes across the country.
Colorado’s Political Transformation
The political coalition that organized against Amendment 2 in the early 1990s is widely credited with planting the seeds of the progressive movement that has since come to dominate Colorado’s political landscape. Democrats today hold the governorship and control of the state legislature. Gov. Jared Polis, elected in 2018, is the first openly gay man elected governor in U.S. history.
Scott Skinner-Thompson, a law professor at the University of Colorado, noted the scale of the transformation: “We went from enacting statewide laws that exclude gay people to having among the most robust protections for LGBTQ+ people. The state is just totally different.”
What’s Next
The legal landscape around anti-discrimination protections and religious liberty remains unsettled at the federal level. With a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, future cases challenging or reinforcing such protections — potentially involving Colorado or other states — could produce rulings that further define the constitutional boundaries set in motion by the original Romer decision. Courts in Georgia and other states are also navigating a range of high-stakes legal disputes with broad policy implications.