Romer v. Evans, 517 US 620 - Supreme Court 1996

—invalidating Colorado constitutional amendment that prohibited the state and local governments from passing laws to protect persons from discrimination based on their sexual orientation

The Court explained that in addition to merely repealing state and local laws, the amendment "prohibits all legislative, executive, or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect the named class...."

The Court has also issued decisions addressing laws that draw distinctions between homosexual and heterosexual conduct or homosexuals and heterosexuals as a class

Romer held that an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that would have "prohibit [ed] all legislative, executive or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect" homosexuals violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Under federal rational-basis review, "we will uphold the legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end."

I] fa law neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold the legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end

In the ordinary case, a law will be sustained if it can be said to advance a legitimate government interest, even if the law seems unwise or works to the disadvantage of a particular group, or if the rationale for it seems tenuous

The most obvious limit is that the Government's interest must be "legitimate," and "a bare... desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest."

However, "[t] he Fourteenth Amendment's promise that no person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws must coexist with the practical necessity that most legislation classifies for one purpose or another, with resulting disadvantage to various groups or persons."

—defining an "invidious" classification as "a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake... inexplicable by anything but animus towards the class it affects