Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Imperfect Plaintiffs

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Radiolab Presents: More Perfect
Episode: The Imperfect Plaintiffs
Date: June 28, 2016
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Kathryn Wells, with reporting by Kathryn Wells

---

Overview

This episode of Radiolab’s legal history spinoff, More Perfect, explores the true stories behind two landmark Supreme Court cases and the people at their heart: “the imperfect plaintiffs.” It delves into the real events behind Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down sodomy laws and transformed LGBT rights in America) and the test-case strategy behind Fisher v. University of Texas (on affirmative action), spotlighting how activists and strategists use individuals—sometimes unwilling or complicated ones—as “perfect plaintiffs” to try and change the law.

---

Key Topics and Insights

1. The Lawrence v. Texas Backstory

• Incident: In 1998, Houston police responded to a call about a man “going crazy with a gun” and unexpectedly arrested John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner for having consensual sex, as reported by Officer Joseph Quinn (02:04–04:47).

• Legal Context: They were charged under Texas’ “homosexual conduct” law (statute 2106), which, though rarely enforced, criminalized same-sex intimacy (06:09–09:08).

• Historical Motivation: Dale Carpenter, law professor, explains that sodomy laws weren’t intended to police bedroom behavior, but to mark gay people as criminals, justifying widespread discrimination (09:40–10:24).

  “Sodomy laws weren’t really about stopping anybody from having sex. They were really about ensuring that we could label people criminal.”
  – Dale Carpenter (09:40)

• Activist Opportunity: Houston activist Lane Lewis had been waiting “seven, eight years” for such a case—a “test case” to overturn the law via the courts (12:44).

  “Because I needed a test case. You can’t change a law like that if you don’t have a case.”
  – Lane Lewis (12:47)

• The Unlikely Plaintiffs: Lawrence and Garner were far from ideal—they had criminal records, weren’t lovers, drank heavily, weren’t political, and didn’t want public roles (14:25).

  “Yeah, they were not the perfect plaintiff. They were not the poster boys. These were not pretty twinks.”
  – Lane Lewis (14:33)

• The Problematic Truth: Lawrence himself confessed to Lewis that they weren’t actually having sex during the arrest (16:43), jeopardizing the whole case.

  “We weren’t even having f*cking sex. You know, we weren’t even…”
  – Lane Lewis, quoting John Lawrence (16:43)

• Strategy Over Facts: Activist and legal strategists prioritized the written arrest narrative (that sex had happened), as the case depended on it (18:18–19:10).

  “Our legal system is not designed to bring out the truth. This is a misconception.”
  – Dale Carpenter (19:10)

• Managing the Plaintiffs: Lewis worked to keep Lawrence and Garner out of the media spotlight and trouble for years, even providing them cards with pre-written responses for reporters (20:37–21:08).

• Legal Journey: The case progressed through various Texas courts, ultimately reaching the U.S. Supreme Court (22:11–22:53).

• The Supreme Court Ruling: Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas overruled the earlier Bowers v. Hardwick, declaring the sodomy law unconstitutional and striking similar laws nationwide (24:31–25:51).

  “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.”
  – Justice Kennedy (25:43)

• Aftermath & Legacy: Lawrence and Garner faded into obscurity post-victory—neither lived to see gay marriage become legal (28:32–29:00), raising questions about the personal costs and ethical ambiguities of using imperfect plaintiffs (29:27).

  “These people were useful as long as they were useful, and after that, they could be forgotten.”
  – Dale Carpenter (29:39)

2. Test Case Litigation: Tactics and Ironies

• Why Use Test Cases?: For controversial or entrenched laws, reformers (of all persuasions) often bypass legislatures and instead strategically provoke or “manufacture” cases to bring constitutional questions before the courts (30:14–31:54).
• Texas Sodomy Law Not Repealed: Despite being unenforceable, the invalidated law remains on the books—symbolic of incomplete progress (31:34).

3. The Architect Behind Fisher v. University of Texas

• Background: The Supreme Court affirmed race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas. The case was publicly associated with plaintiff Abigail Fisher, but the real architect was conservative activist Edward Blum (37:33–38:14).

• Edward Blum’s Methods: Blum uses targeted outreach and vetting to find and prepare plaintiffs for legal challenges—a deliberate echo of strategies historically employed by civil rights activists (58:03–58:49).

  “He set out to find the perfect white student. He set up a website called utnotfair.org… I think I ended up with about 175 responses. Of those, about 100 were viable.”
  – Kathryn Wells (58:03, 58:31)

• Not a New Tactic: The episode connects Blum’s tactics to the test-case history of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), where the plaintiff’s arrest was carefully orchestrated, and the early NAACP’s legal strategies (61:23–65:09).

  “The whole thing is cooked, starting with the arrest to challenge the separate cars law.”
  – Susan Karl (63:34)

• Legitimacy of Manufactured Cases: The Supreme Court ultimately protected test-case litigation (66:28–66:45), framing it as political expression akin to free speech.

• Ambiguous Legacy: Edward Blum’s current efforts to overturn affirmative action use tactics perfected by the early civil rights movement—highlighting the double-edged nature of legal activism and the slipperiness of who counts as a “minority” in American courts (67:10–68:46).

---

Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Plaintiffs’ Perfection

  “You've got to find a perfect plaintiff. But how do you find that person? And what happens if they're not so perfect?”
  – Jad Abumrad (07:34)

• On Using the System

  “You basically take the Democratic hit…and this is again, this goes back right to the founding of our country… when are you going to let popular will run wild and when are you going to constrain it?”
  – Ellie Mistelligan, legal editor (30:57)

• On Lasting Impact

  “This hero of the gay rights movement was unknown and unmourned at his passing.”
  – Dale Carpenter on John Lawrence (29:00)

• On Manufactured Plaintiffs as Free Speech

  “Manufacturing litigation is a form of political expression.”
  – Susan Karl, law professor (66:45)

• On the Irony of Legal Tactics

  “He’s just implementing a strategy that was perfected by the people he now ironically seeks to disenfranchise. Right. This is civil rights movement 101.”
  – Ellie Mistelligan (60:41)

---

Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:45–03:08 – Police Enter Lawrence’s Apartment
• 06:09–07:00 – The Arrest for Sodomy: The Law in Action
• 09:40–10:24 – Dale Carpenter on the Purpose of Sodomy Laws
• 12:44–12:53 – Lane Lewis’ Hunt for a Test Case
• 14:33–14:39 – “Not the Perfect Plaintiff”
• 16:43–17:06 – “We Weren’t Even Having Sex”
• 18:18–19:10 – Preserving the Narrative for Litigation’s Sake
• 22:11–22:53 – Chronology of the Case’s Legal Journey
• 24:31–25:51 – Supreme Court Decision in Lawrence v. Texas
• 28:32–29:00 – Fate of Plaintiffs After the Case
• 31:34–31:54 – Texas Does Not Repeal the Law
• 37:33–38:14 – Fisher v. UT and Edward Blum’s Role
• 58:03–58:52 – “Casting Call” for Affirmative Action Plaintiffs
• 61:23–63:34 – Manufacturing Plaintiffs: Plessy v. Ferguson Story
• 66:28–66:45 – Supreme Court Validates Test Case Litigation as Expression
• 67:10–68:46 – Courts as Protectors of Political Minorities

---

Tone and Style

The episode maintains a characteristic Radiolab exuberance and curiosity, blending serious legal analysis, personal stories, and cultural insight. There’s a persistent tension between legal technicalities and messy, real-life details; the hosts and guests are candid, sometimes blunt, and often self-questioning about the justice system’s quirks.

---

Summary

The episode demonstrates how the quest for justice in American law is often stranger—and more human—than it looks from a distance. It lays bare the messiness of legal activism, the imperfect reality behind “landmark cases,” and how the tools developed for social progress can be used by anyone with the means and will to find (or fabricate) a perfect plaintiff. The broader message: the legal system is less about truth than about roles, stories, and strategy—and progress often comes at an unpredictable personal and ethical price.

Transcript

[Narrator]

With ThreatLocker Zero Trust Protection, you can stop breaches before they happen. The result? No stress about the latest malware or zero day attacks, because with ThreatLocker, you.

[Host or Interviewer]

Block them by default.

[Narrator]

Gain more control over your environment. With ThreatLocker Zero Trust protection, the holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com Special offer terms apply.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey everybody, this is Chad. As you may or may not know, we just started our first ever Radiolab spinoff called More Perfect, which, you know, the idea is to tell stories about the Supreme Court or like cases that are in front of the Supreme Court, and to hear those dramatic stories and then sort of think about them really hard, kind of taking the Radiolab vibe and putting it into this new space. It's done really well. We're so excited and we want the entire Radiolab posse to know about it. So if you haven't subscribed yet, go to itunes or wherever you get your podcast. Check it out. We hope you'll subscribe.

[Kathryn Wells]

And.

[Jad Abumrad]

And I wanted to play actually one more episode for you guys. This one is an episode we've been working on and researching and reporting for months and months and months. Really hope you enjoy it.

[Narrator]

More Perfect.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. This is More Perfect Today two stories from reporter Kathryn Wells. The first has some adult content in it, so be warned, if you're listening with kids, you might want to skip this one. Here's Katherine.

[Kathryn Wells]

So maybe we can just start with the. The night that it started.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. So when?

[Kathryn Wells]

We can start with the start.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. So give me the who, what, when, where.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

The best way to describe being a patrol officer on the street is you have a front row seat to the greatest show on Earth.

[Kathryn Wells]

September 17, 1998. On the outskirts of Houston. There's a deputy sheriff named Joseph Quinn.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

He hadn't been on duty very long at all.

[Kathryn Wells]

He's driving around and he hears this call go out on the radio.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Priority call.

[Kathryn Wells]

Somebody's called in and said, there's a man going crazy with a gun in an apartment. He happens to be driving right by the apartment complex.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Pretty familiar with the complex. I knew where the building was.

[Kathryn Wells]

So he's like, hey, I've got this. I'm right here. I'm going in.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

So I parked, and I tried to be as tactical as I could. Listen and see if I hear any kind of sounds or disturbance. Walked into the breezeway on high alert, senses heightened, adrenaline's pumping. And out in the middle of the courtyard, there was a gentleman standing out there. As soon as he saw me, he started yelling, over here, over here. I could tell, you know, he was upset, he was crying. He said, he's up there. He's up there. I said, up where?

[Kathryn Wells]

And he points up to this apartment on the second floor.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I said, the man with the gun is up there. Is that where you're saying, that apartment right there? He said, yeah.

[Kathryn Wells]

So a couple other officers arrive and they get information.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

We took our time. Control your breathing. Get that, you know, the adrenaline rush and the blood pressure down to where you don't get tunnel vision. Went up the stairs.

[Kathryn Wells]

Four of us, when they get up to the top of the stairs, got.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

To the apartment door, and the door was ajar. It was open. I listened for a second, gave him the hand sign that I couldn't detect anything in the apartment. So we got ready, and I pushed the door open, all the way open. I announced our presence. Sheriff's department. Anyone in the apartment, come out where we could see you. Keep your hands in plain sight. I did this two or three times, very loudly. Still no response.

[Kathryn Wells]

There's a bedroom in the back of the apartment.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

There was a door to a back bedroom that was closed.

[Kathryn Wells]

And these two officers start walking towards it.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

The deputy that was in front of me, he opened the door, pushed it open, and as soon as he did, he lurched back like he was startled.

[Kathryn Wells]

So he goes into the bedroom, fingers on the trigger.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Pressure's pulled. If I see a gun and it's pointed at me, I'm gonna take him out.

[Kathryn Wells]

But then.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Oh, it's like, you got to be kidding me. Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

What was it? What was it?

[Kathryn Wells]

It was two guys having sex.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Something I'll never forget. I mean, it's like I just. I was just flabbergasted.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so here's the story. The two guys that were in the apartment were John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner. John was an older white guy. He was in his 50s. And Tyrone was a younger black guy in his 30s.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Come to find out, basically, the gentleman.

[Kathryn Wells]

Downstairs, this is the guy who called.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

911, was former lover or on again, off again lover? One, and he was upset that the other, that they were engaged in some Kind of activity.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so the guy in the parking lot was the boyfriend of Tyrone. And we don't really know why he called 911, but the thought is that maybe he was jealous of whatever was going on in the apartment and he decided he wanted to get them in trouble.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

You know, it was a lover's triangle kind of thing.

[Kathryn Wells]

So, you know, the cops come in, and John and Tyrone have no idea what's going on. They didn't know that the boyfriend had gone and called 911. So they're shocked. And Quinn says they start yelling at him.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Just. I mean, combative, belligerent, refusing to comply with anything. We hated gays. We were homophobes. We were jackbooted Nazi thugs.

[Kathryn Wells]

So at a certain point, Quinn just.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Decides, you know, if we leave them here and the way they're acting and they're intoxicated, we're going to have further calls here. You know, it's not going to end if we leave them here.

[Kathryn Wells]

So he decides to arrest them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really? What's. On what charge? I mean, they're just in their house, right?

[Kathryn Wells]

So that's the question.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Well, I've been a patrolman for 15 years, and, you know, I'm blessed with the ability to have somewhat of what you would call a photographic memory, meaning.

[Kathryn Wells]

He knew the penal code really well. So he starts thinking. He starts going through all the possible laws that could apply to this, and he lands on this one.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I know it pretty well.

[Kathryn Wells]

2106, statute 2106.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

It says that members of the same sex can engage in sexual conduct.

[Kathryn Wells]

It's a law banning sodomy.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Deviate sexual intercourse.

[Narrator]

We were not even treated like civilized citizens.

[Kathryn Wells]

This is John Lawrence from an interview he did with lambda legal in 2008. It's one of the few bits of tape that we have of him.

[Narrator]

It's just all of a sudden, we're taking you downtown. I wasn't allowed to put clothes on. I was handcuffed and dragged down the stairs.

[Kathryn Wells]

Officer Joe Quinn has a different version of that story.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Took him in custody, afforded them the opportunity to, you know, get dressed. They refused, so we forced them to put some underwear on. You know, we actually held them down and put underwear on them and escorted them out of the apartment like that. Because we. I mean, it was. It was a struggle just to get them to put underwear on.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just jumping for a second. Whatever happened in that room, which Katherine will go into more in a second. This moment of two guys supposedly having sex and then being charged with sodomy.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

It was like a strike of lightning.

[Jad Abumrad]

It would begin a process that would profoundly reshape America. And what's interesting, and this is one of the first things that you bump into if you are an idiot about the law, which I am, and then you try and make a podcast about the law, which I'm trying to do, is that there's often this disconnect. Like, laws are these things that sort of float above us, all these beautiful abstractions. And yet, if you want to challenge the law, you've got to find a person down here in the mud whose experience perfectly somehow captures what you feel is wrong with the law. You've got to find a perfect plaintiff. But how do you find that person? And what happens if they're not so perfect? These two stories that you're gonna hear are about a particular tactic that's sometimes called test case litigation that I wasn't too aware of before Kathryn's reporting. The second story actually touches on a very current case that was just decided a few days ago. This is the case on affirmative action. We'll meet the guy who brought that case, who critics say is basically destroying some of the most iconic civil rights law from the 60s. But first, we'll get back to Kathryn Wells with the story of a case called Lawrence v. Texas.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Okay, so come on in.

[Narrator]

I brought out my Lawrence vs Texas box of stuff.

[Kathryn Wells]

So I went to Houston, and I visited a guy named Mitchell Katin. He's a lawyer there. And he showed me the arrest papers. He had the arrest papers for these two guys.

[Narrator]

J. Lawrence. Criminal officers observed the defendant engaged in deviant sexual conduct, charged with homosexual conduct. It's right there in writing.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It really is strange to see those words on a piece of paper. It seems like such an anachronism, but it was not.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

It's not.

[Narrator]

And this is dated September 17, 1998.

[Kathryn Wells]

Now, in 1998, Texas wasn't the only state that had this kind of law on the books. At least 13 other states also had an anti sodomy law.

[Narrator]

And it's important to note that, you know, this law wasn't used very much. People were not arrested for this law.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Because when would police be present in your home to observe you having sex?

[Kathryn Wells]

This is Dale Carpenter.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

I teach Constitutional law, SMU law school. I mean, sodomy laws weren't really about stopping anybody from having sex. They were really about ensuring that we could label people criminal.

[Narrator]

It was a label that people could.

[Kathryn Wells]

Point to so that people who disapproved of homosexuality could Say, look, the defining.

[Narrator]

Act of homosexuality, a crime.

[Kathryn Wells]

So if it's a crime and you commit the crime, well, you're a criminal.

[Narrator]

It's a criminal statute.

[Kathryn Wells]

People can say, you're a criminal. Which then gives the state a legal basis to justify all sorts of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, military.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

In every context, it had an effect.

[Kathryn Wells]

And many people argued that these laws, they also sent a strong cultural message.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Well, it's being called gay bashing. But the most recent example here in Houston is better described as a vicious killing.

[Kathryn Wells]

And this was at a time when hate crimes in Houston were surprisingly common.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Paul Broussard, 27 years old, died after being beaten with a nail studded two by four.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

The second senseless killing in the Montrose.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Area in less than three months. There was a lot of blood, and.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

It was real apparent that he'd been shot.

[Kathryn Wells]

So to make a long story short.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

The gay rights movement was very eager to repeal that sodomy law.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so John and Tyrone were arrested on a Thursday night the next day.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

It so happened that because of the location of John Lawrence's apartment, the case landed in a Justice of the peace court.

[Kathryn Wells]

Meaning after Quinn made the arrest, the report was sent to that court for processing. Now, this court mostly deals with traffic. It's mostly a traffic court, but there happens to be this clerk in the.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Court who was gay, and he couldn't believe that somebody had actually been arrested for homosexual conduct in their home.

[Kathryn Wells]

So that night, this clerk and his partner go to a bar, and they.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Start talking to the bartender.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I believe it was a Friday night.

[Kathryn Wells]

This is Lane Lewis. He was the bartender.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

That's what I was doing. I was a bartender at night.

[Kathryn Wells]

So these two guys come in, and they tell Lane, you're not gonna believe what happened.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

He said, a couple of guys were arrested and charged with sodomy. And Lane was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

You just can't believe that such a thing happened. It's such an unusual occurrence.

[Kathryn Wells]

But they were like, no, no, it really happened. And Lane said, send me the report.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Monday morning, bright and early. I could hear my fax machine go off. Went in there, and I pulled it off. Officers observed the defendant engaged in deviant sexual conduct. And I mean, that's when it hit me. Oh, I mean, it was so clear night and day to me. I immediately knew what I had in my hand.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why does he care so much about this?

[Kathryn Wells]

Well, so when he wasn't being a bartender, Lane was a community organizer, particularly around LGBT issues.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I was president of the Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

[Kathryn Wells]

That's one of the oldest LGBT civil rights groups in the South. He'd been waiting for this moment. How long had you been looking for a case?

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Seven, eight years. Seven or eight years.

[Kathryn Wells]

Cause just to lay it out explicitly, why did you need.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Because I needed a test case. You can't change a law like that if you don't have a case.

[Kathryn Wells]

People in the Texas legislature had been trying to remove this law from the books for years, according to Dale Carpenter.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

But every time someone would introduce a proposal to repeal the law, it would get snickers and cat calls in the state legislature.

[Kathryn Wells]

It just wasn't really going anywhere. So activists had decided the only way to get this done is to bypass the legislature and go straight to the courts.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

So I needed a case. I had to have someone guilty.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Lane starts trying to track them down. At this point, the two guys had been released from jail. And he eventually gets John on the.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Phone conversation basically went like this. Hi, my name is Lane Lewis. I'm a gay activist here in town. You don't know me. That's not important. But I understand you've been arrested. I'm begging you not to plead out.

[Kathryn Wells]

Meaning don't just say you did it and pay the fine.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I knew I couldn't have them plead out.

[Kathryn Wells]

Cause then there'd be nothing Lane could do.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I said, I will find you lawyers. I will raise the money. I will pay for everything. Just don't do anything until you and I have an opportunity to meet.

[Kathryn Wells]

A few weeks later, they all meet at Mitchell Katien's office. And it immediately becomes clear that these guys are sort of an odd couple.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

John Lawrence at that time was about. I think he was 55 years old.

[Kathryn Wells]

Tall, white, kind of a big guy.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

He worked as a lab technician for a hospital.

[Kathryn Wells]

Tyrone Garner was a young, skinny black guy, 24 years younger than John.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

No steady job.

[Kathryn Wells]

He bounced around between friends, apartments.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Just kind of went from place to place and job to job.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

No idea what their connection was. They weren't lovers. Both heavy drinkers. Very heavy.

[Kathryn Wells]

Both had criminal records.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Yes.

[Kathryn Wells]

Tyrone had been convicted of assault and drug possession. And John had been convicted in the 60s of murder by automobile.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Yeah, they were not the perfect plaintiff. They were not the poster boys. These were not pretty twinks.

[Kathryn Wells]

And they weren't political.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Oh, no, not at all. Not at all.

[Kathryn Wells]

In fact, when Lane told John Lawrence.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I'm a gay activist here in town.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

John Lawrence didn't even know what that was. I don't know what a gay activist is.

[Kathryn Wells]

Basically, neither of them had Any interest, like no interest in being a public figure.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

So I gave them the whole ask.

[Host or Interviewer]

Not what your country can do for you.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Ask not what you can do for your country's speech. I mean, literally, I reminded them of who Harry Hay was.

[Narrator]

I just simply thought, well, now it's time for me to organize my people.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Harry Hay was arguably the founder of the original LGBT movement. You listeners may not remember, but at one time, it was illegal for certain number of gay males and the LGBT community to get together in one location. It was illegal. Couldn't do it.

[Narrator]

I dreamt even then of the idea that there would be networks of sanctuaries, of places where we could come and.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Out of which we would be able.

[Narrator]

To move and organize and change things across the country.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

So I told them a little bit about that history and how far we'd come and how far we had to go, and that they had an opportunity to change that. So I told him, I'll be able to protect you for maybe the first year or two, but there's going to come a time where it will no longer be about you. It'll be about something much, much bigger. So they agreed. Tyrone's attitude was, okay, you know, what do you need me to do? John was much more indignant.

[Narrator]

I was pissed they picked the wrong person to pull this on. It was a ridiculous law, but Texas loves to keep some antiquated things around.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

He was mad, he was angry.

[Kathryn Wells]

And here's where the story gets complicated. Because at one point, according to Lane Lewis, they were having this conversation and John was ranting, you know, about how he'd been treated. And he said, you know what the worst part is?

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

We weren't even having fucking sex. You know, we weren't even. Da, da, da, da.

[Narrator]

He said that they were not having sex.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, what?

[Narrator]

That they were not having sex. That they were sitting in their underwear on the couch watching the late night news.

[Kathryn Wells]

They say they were sitting there doing nothing, and the cops just burst in and started pushing them around and that they were never even having sex.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, but isn't this whole case about them having sex?

[Kathryn Wells]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you're saying the thing that this case is supposed to be about might not be true?

[Kathryn Wells]

Right.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Well, so I interviewed three of the four police officers.

[Kathryn Wells]

Dale Carpenter says when he talked to the police officers, he did find that their stories were sort of all over the place. One guy said it was anal sex he saw. One guy later said he thought it might have been oral.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

The other two officers said they never saw anything.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Dale says he Believes John's story.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

There probably was actually no sex.

[Kathryn Wells]

He thinks what might have happened is that the cops walked in and saw some gay art on the wall and some gay magazines lying around.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

I have a feeling that really off the officers. And they said, well, we know they're homosexuals. They probably engaged in homosexual conduct at some point. And that's illegal in Texas.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

No, no, I. There. There was no. No. No doubt about it. I mean, I have no. No reason to lie.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Quinn, to this day, still insists that he walked in on them copulating.

[Kathryn Wells]

He says he saw what he saw, and he just did his job.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

If you want to be homosexual and that's the way you want to live your lifestyle, that's fine. I don't agree with your lifestyle, but that's my opinion. That's what it is. It's an opinion.

[Kathryn Wells]

So there's no way to know what actually happened, obviously. But in a way, it doesn't matter, because when John said that to Lane, that they weren't even having sex, I.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Said, john, don't ever say that again. Don't ever say that to anybody again. Because we couldn't have people know that. We couldn't have people find that out.

[Jad Abumrad]

They're gonna go forward with this.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yep.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

We were scared that, you know, the case would get screwed up at that point and potentially the DA Dropping the charges.

[Kathryn Wells]

So basically, you had to preserve. If Joe Quinn was lying on that police report, you had to preserve the lie. Correct?

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Correct.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dumb question. You can just do that. You can just preserve a lie to keep a case going. That's okay.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Well, keep in mind, it wasn't our job to prove or disprove the lie.

[Kathryn Wells]

You know, to Lane, the thing that mattered was not what did or didn't happen that night. The thing that mattered was what the arrest report said.

[Jad Abumrad]

But if what the arrest report said potentially didn't happen, shouldn't that matter?

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Well, no. No, one. Our legal system is not designed to bring out the truth. This is a misconception. It does not bring out the truth.

[Kathryn Wells]

That's Dale Carpenter again.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

It is people who play their roles in pursuing whatever they think their best interests are. And that's exactly what happened.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

So for the first few years, my job was to keep the boys out of the news.

[Kathryn Wells]

And why was that?

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Well, they had a tendency to drink and get rowdy and fight, and they liked to go to seedy hotels and rent rooms and get really, really high, drunk, whatever. And inevitably, they would start fighting with each other. And so what I did, what I would do is I would. I knew the different places they stayed.

[Kathryn Wells]

He says he would go to these seedy hotels and talk to the clerks.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Give them a business card, tell them if these boys come and check in, they cause problems, call me first. And on more than one occasion, it happened. I'd get a call at 2 o' clock in the morning, your guys are here. They're causing trouble. I'm gonna have to call the cops. I would jump out of bed, put on my clothes because we couldn't have them. You know, they're already on the front page of the Houston Chronicle. We could not have our defendants doing a perp walk for drugs and alcohol. So I would drive down there and I would figure out which one was causing the most problems, put them in my car, and I would drive them somewhere else. I would separate them out. That happened more than once. More than once.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Lane said he had this fear that John and Tyrone would start talking to the media and let something slip about their version of the story. So he gave them these little cards.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Kept it in their wallet. Small little sentence, basically said, thank you for contacting me. Please refer to Lane Lewis. And had my phone number and my email. And I said, so anytime the media contacts, you don't think about what you say, right? Because that's where you get screwed up. When you start thinking about what you want to say to the media, pull this out of your wallet, read it and hang up.

[Kathryn Wells]

Even so, there were these close calls as the case wound its way through the court system. Mitchell Katine told me about this one time there was this press conference and.

[Narrator]

We came outside to the normal media group that was out there wanting quotes.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

And to talk to us.

[Narrator]

And they didn't want to hear from the lawyers, they wanted to hear from the clients.

[Kathryn Wells]

So he was like, all right, just this ones.

[Narrator]

Tyrone got up to the mic and I think a reporter asked him, you know, how do you feel about this? And he said, we didn't do anything wrong. He just kind of yelled that out in an angry way. We didn't do anything wrong.

[Kathryn Wells]

Mitchell pulled him back and was like.

[Narrator]

Uh, oh, that's enough, that's enough. Next day, we didn't do anything wrong. That was the quote on the headlines of the morning's paper the next day. And certainly I knew what he meant.

[Kathryn Wells]

That they weren't having sex, but, you.

[Narrator]

Know, could also be interpreted as homosexual conduct.

[Kathryn Wells]

Is nothing wrong, he says, luckily, that's how people took.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Was very nerve wracking.

[Kathryn Wells]

Because this went on for years. This was years.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Yeah, a couple of years.

[Kathryn Wells]

Here's kind of how it went down. They started at this justice of the Peace court. They were sentenced to a fine of 125 bucks. They appealed. Then the case gets kicked up one level to the Harris County Criminal Court. They're fined again. They appeal it again.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Then it went to another level, to.

[Kathryn Wells]

The 14th Court of Appeals and one more level.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Ultimately, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in Texas for criminal appeals, refused even to hear the case. So the only next step is the Supreme Court.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

We'll hear argument next in number 02102.

[Narrator]

John Geddes Lawrence and Tyrone Garner versus.

[Kathryn Wells]

Texas, March 26, 2003. Almost five years after the arrest, the case lands at the Supreme Court. And by the time it gets up there.

[Narrator]

Mr. Smith, Mr. Chief justice, and may.

[Kathryn Wells]

It please the court, the story is not dwelled upon at all. They didn't say these guys weren't in a relationship. They didn't say if these guys were having sex. One of them was cheating on his partner. Seems like they might have not been having sex anyway. They didn't say any of those things.

[Narrator]

They said there are gay families, that family relationships are established, that there are hundreds of thousands of people, that this.

[Kathryn Wells]

Is about families and relationships. How people in loving relationships have the right to express themselves in whatever they want. It's none of the state's business.

[Narrator]

The opportunity to engage in sexual expression as they will in the privacy of their own homes, performs much the same function that it does in the marital context.

[Kathryn Wells]

You know, basically, people in relationships have the right to have sex with each other regardless of their gender.

[Narrator]

You should protect it for everyone that this is a fundamental matter of American values. So.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. It's like watching something float up from the sort of mucky, like, realm of human real life, and then it just gets kind of prettier as it floats upwards.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yeah, it was such a pretty story that people were suspicious of it. Like, people were asking, how did this arrest even happen?

[Narrator]

This was a setup. You all set this up. That was their big battle cry.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Mitchell Katine says he heard this over and over again.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Wasn't a setup. But I always wanted to say, so, so what if it was?

[Narrator]

Does that make it any less of a case?

[Kathryn Wells]

Who cares?

[Narrator]

Unless the court has further questions. Thank you very much.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Thank you, Mr. Smith. The case is submitted.

[Jad Abumrad]

The honorable court is now adjourned until Monday.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Next 10 o'.

[Host or Interviewer]

Clock.

[Narrator]

Three months later, the opinion of the court number 02102 Lawrence against Texas will be announced by Justice Kennedy.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Justice Kennedy begins reading a summary of his opinion.

[Narrator]

The question before the Court is the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Everybody's waiting for the outcome.

[Narrator]

In Houston, Texas police officers.

[Kathryn Wells]

So for context, it wasn't totally clear how this case was going to come out, because 17 years earlier, there had.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Been a case called Bowers against Hardwick.

[Kathryn Wells]

Bowers versus Hardwick, and then they had ruled that sodomy laws were fine.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

And I would suggest to the Court.

[Narrator]

That there is no constitutional warrant to.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Conclude that there should be a fundamental.

[Host or Interviewer]

Right to engage in homosexual sodomy.

[Kathryn Wells]

And the Supreme Court almost never overrules things that are that recent.

[Narrator]

Bowers vs. Hardwick had some factual similarities to this case.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Justice Kennedy starts talking about all the similarities between the cases.

[Narrator]

Police officers were dispatched to a private residence.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

The tension starts building.

[Narrator]

The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyrone Gardner, engaging in a sexual act.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

And then finally he got to the moment where he said virus was not.

[Narrator]

Correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

And at the point Justice Kennedy said that there were people sobbing in the.

[Narrator]

Supreme Court, Barris vs. Hardwick should be and now is overruled. At rallies across the nation, gay rights advocates celebrated their legal victory, a ruling so broad it surprised even many of them. The court ruled in favor of two Texas who challenged a state law that made homosexual conduct a crime.

[Host or Interviewer]

The ruling overturns a Texas law that allowed police to arrest gays for having sex.

[Narrator]

Twelve other states have similar laws, including Oklahoma.

[Kathryn Wells]

That morning, John Lawrence was at home in his apartment in Houston, watching the news.

[Jad Abumrad]

I am laying in bed trying to.

[Narrator]

Go back and get my 40 winks, and all of a sudden it says has ruled the law unconstitutional.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I came out of bed quite happy.

[Kathryn Wells]

Obviously not everybody was happy about it.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals or any other group.

[Narrator]

Promoting their agenda through normal democratic.

[Kathryn Wells]

Justice Scalia said, basically, if. If you want this to happen, that's fine, but you're going about it the wrong way. The Court is not the place where this decision should be made. You need to go talk to your fellow citizens and convince them that this law needs to change. Coming to us and asking us to bypass what your fellow citizens seem to want. That is not how democracy should work.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else.

[Kathryn Wells]

He sees this as a small minority imposing their views on everybody else and Then he said he was worried about something else.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions.

[Kathryn Wells]

That this decision would open the floodgates and that it would only be a matter of time before the court was being asked to decide on gay marriage. Second relevant principle is that. And he was right. When Kennedy read the marriage decision in 2015 in Lawrence versus Texas, he talked about Lawrence.

[Narrator]

The court held that private intimacy of same sex couples cannot be declared a crime. Yet it does not follow that freedom stops there. Outlaw to outcast may be a step forward, but it does not achieve the full promise of liberty.

[Kathryn Wells]

So what happened to Garner and Lawrence? Well, John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner didn't live to see this. Tyrone died in 2006 from meningitis.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

No job, had no money. He was 39, and his family was very poor. And they didn't have the money to bury him. They didn't even have the money to reclaim his body from the county morgue.

[Kathryn Wells]

As for John Lawrence, he died in 2011 at 68 from heart problems.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

We didn't even find out about it until a month after he was dead. This hero of the gay rights movement was unknown and unwarned at his passing.

[Kathryn Wells]

What does that say about sort of the practice of bringing things to the Supreme Court, that the two people whose story this case revolves around could sort of fade into the background afterwards?

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

Well, one is tempted, I think, to be very cynical in some ways, because it means that these people were useful as long as they were useful, and after that they could be forgotten.

[Jad Abumrad]

I have to say, I actually had that reaction a little bit. I mean, this is a story of social progress, but there's something a little funny at the center of it for me. And as we were playing this for our legal editor, Elina Stahl, and I think that we talked about this a bit.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

In a lot of ways, our legal system devolves into an ends justifies the means kind of justice. We care about the process so much. And look, the process is extremely important.

[Jad Abumrad]

But, Ellie, isn't this just weird to you? Like, this is a dumb law. Like a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb law.

[Kathryn Wells]

Why not?

[Jad Abumrad]

Just, shouldn't there be an avenue to say, this is a dumb law, let's take it away. Why do you have to find some people who didn't have sex, they say, pretend that they have sex, then march them up all the way through the court system and then forget about them? I mean, it just seems weird to me. It seems like an empty theater. Why do we have to do it that way?

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

Because if you wanted to put a ballot initiative up in 2003 in Texas saying is gay sex okay? It would fail. It would fail in 2003 in Texas. It would probably fail in 2016 in Texas. It will probably fail in 2032 in Texas. That's why. That's why the majority isn't always right.

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

So.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

You basically take the Democratic hit and this is again, this goes back right to the founding of our country. Like, when are you going to let popular will run wild and when are you going to constrain it? Not just restrain it, constrain it. You know, when are you gonna just stop it? And Lawrence v. Texas is an example of a we're just gonna stop it. And it was the right call.

[Kathryn Wells]

So after this Supreme Court decision, did Texas immediately go and repeal the law?

[Dale Carpenter (Law Professor)]

No, actually, the law is still on the books in Texas. No. The Texas legislature, like other legislatures around the country, refuses to repeal the law. It stays there. A sort of remnant of a kind of a dark, almost forgotten past.

[Jad Abumrad]

Keep in mind they can't enforce the law now that it's unconstitutional, but they refuse to take it off. Coming up, a very deep dive into the guy behind one of the most controversial cases this term, a case that just got decided late last week. This is more perfect.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

The honorable, the Chief justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Oy, oy, oy. All persons having business before the honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attention. The court is now sitting. God save the United States, in this honorable court.

[Kathryn Wells]

Hi, my name is Peter Fink and.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I'm calling from Rizona refugee camp in Evia, Greece.

[Narrator]

Radiolab is supported in part by the.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Narrator]

Radiolab is supported by BILT. Nobody wants to pay rent. But if you have to, Bilt works to make it more worthwhile. By paying rent, through Bilt, you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. But it doesn't stop there. You can dine out at your favorite local restaurants and earn additional points, get VIP treat at certain fitness studios and enjoy exclusive experiences just for built members. Every month, earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home, by going to joinbilt.com Radiolab that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com Radiolab.

[Kathryn Wells]

Hey, I'm Molly Webster and this is an ad by BetterHelp. So it happens every year. The seasons are changing, the days are getting shorter, and basically once it becomes dark outside of my window, I feel like the rest of the world disappears and I'm just alone and there's nothing left to do but watch television. This November, BetterHelp is asking everyone to reach out to our people. That could be your family, your friends, your neighbors, and to resist this call of the cocoon. And yeah, reaching out can take some courage. I've got text messages from January I haven't responded to and you know what? I'm gonna write em back right now. Hi, sorry I've been missing how are you? Why don't we all do this sooner? Therapy is the same way. BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. You just fill out a short questionnaire and they find a licensed therapist who they think you'll like. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com Radiolab that's betterhelp.com Radiolab.

[Narrator]

Radiolab is supported by Rippling Finance. Teams often spend weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating, and that's not software as a service. That's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments, Rippling can help. Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance, helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system. Designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busywork and silos in business software. With Rippling, you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at r-ip p l-I n g.com Radiolab terms and conditions apply. Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive. It's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists, and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy, and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is more perfect. I'm Jad Abumrad. If Supreme Court cases can sometimes feel like plays where the activists and lawyers are sort of like the directors pulling the strings and the people in the center of the case, the plaintiffs are just like these imperfect actors who have been cast and the script's already been written for them. Well, that dynamic was definitely in effect this term. In fact, just last week, we have.

[Narrator]

Had a decision just handed down in what was billed as the landmark affirmative.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Action case of this term.

[Kathryn Wells]

Josh. This is a decision that will impact college admissions nationwide.

[Jad Abumrad]

The the case, Fisher vs. University of Texas, centered around the following should universities.

[Kathryn Wells]

Be able to use racial preferences in college admissions?

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, the University of Texas has this policy where the top 10% of every high school class automatically get in, but for everybody else, they will consider factors like race. And the question was, is that okay? A couple days ago, the court decided, barely, that, yes, it is okay.

[Narrator]

The Supreme Court has upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas.

[Kathryn Wells]

Affirmative action in higher education is constitutional.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, the case was brought by a young white woman named Abigail Fisher. Abigail Fisher.

[Narrator]

Abigail Fisher believed her race may have hurt her chances to attend the University of Texas.

[Kathryn Wells]

There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into ut. And the only other difference between was the color of our skin.

[Jad Abumrad]

She was arguing that affirmative action discriminates against her as a white person. Now, what you saw in the wake of that decision and even before, especially online, was this just torrent of hate directed squarely at her.

[Kathryn Wells]

So I'm trying to hold my tongue, but I'm about to tell Abby to.

[Narrator]

Have a seat, okay?

[Kathryn Wells]

I can't get into a good college. Black people have it better.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

Bitch, if you don't take your little ass on somewhere.

[Kathryn Wells]

Maybe if your grades didn't suck, you.

[Narrator]

Dumbass, maybe you would have gotten into a good college. Becky with the bad grades.

[Kathryn Wells]

Really happy you and your racist lawyer.

[Jad Abumrad]

Got shot down it's all been pointed right at Abby Fisher, which you could argue honestly isn't fair because this case may have very little to do with Abby Fisher. I mean, if you look at the.

[Kathryn Wells]

Press conferences, I don't believe that students should be treated differently based on their race.

[Jad Abumrad]

Abby Fisher is the one at the podium, but behind her, far in the background, you'll see the sky. He's there in every single press conference, sort of back in the. At the edge of the frame. Not too many people know about him. His name is Edward Bloom, and he's the one who actually brought the case. When it comes to this case and so many others, he is the architect. He's brought dozens of lawsuits, not just this one. And he seems to be a maestro of getting cases to the Supreme Court that challenged civil rights law. Critics sort of paint him as this like one man wrecking crew for civil rights. Like he's almost single handedly rolling back decades of civil rights law. And when it comes to affirmative action, he says he's not done. Just to make a long story short, we wanted to meet him, figure out how he does it.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yeah, so I went to Tallahassee.

[Jad Abumrad]

Voter Kathryn Wells takes it from here.

[Kathryn Wells]

That's where he lives, or he winters in Tallahassee. Oh, man. Golden retriever.

[Jad Abumrad]

Molly, you walk in. What initially struck you?

[Kathryn Wells]

His golden retriever is what initially struck me. Literally, physically.

[Host or Interviewer]

Catherine, nice meeting you.

[Kathryn Wells]

Of course. And I don't know what I was expecting, but when you hear about these cases, you know, I mean, critics are really. People are mad about these cases.

[Narrator]

It is deeply disturbing, truly outrageous.

[Kathryn Wells]

It's a betrayal of the American. So I go to meet him.

[Host or Interviewer]

And your flight from Austin to Dallas to Tallahassee. Uneventful and on time. And good, easy, good.

[Kathryn Wells]

He's like a totally nice guy, a regular guy.

[Jad Abumrad]

What does he look like?

[Kathryn Wells]

Like a dad.

[Host or Interviewer]

There is something in me that just loves tradition and custom.

[Kathryn Wells]

He loves listening to the great American songbook.

[Narrator]

Life is a beautiful thing.

[Host or Interviewer]

Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. I love art and museums, independent films, golf.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's his. What's his story? What's his Backstory?

[Kathryn Wells]

Well, he's 64.

[Host or Interviewer]

I was born in a small town in Michigan. My dad owned a shoe store there. My mom worked with him in the shoe store.

[Kathryn Wells]

What had been your kind of political leanings up to this point?

[Host or Interviewer]

Well, I'm the first Republican my mother ever met. I hate to use the word typical, but it really was a typical liberal Jewish household. My mother and father were Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Democrats, always Froidded Democrat.

[Kathryn Wells]

And he said he was that way, too, all the way through college, the.

[Host or Interviewer]

University of Texas grad school, State University of New York, where I spent a year studying of all things African literature.

[Kathryn Wells]

But he says somewhere along the way, his political leanings sort of started to shift.

[Host or Interviewer]

I spent a summer in Israel living on a kibbutz.

[Kathryn Wells]

And he says he came out of that experience a little less liberal than he was before. And he got married. And then in the early 80s, he's living in Houston, working as a stockbroker.

[Host or Interviewer]

And we met our neighbors, this particular couple. They were New Yorkers who had moved to Houston. Both grew up as liberals. And the guy, he sort of opened my eyes to the world of the neocons.

[Kathryn Wells]

The guy introduced him to these magazines.

[Host or Interviewer]

Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary magazine, like conservative magazines.

[Kathryn Wells]

And this was around the time that the neocon movement was really hitting its stride. You had all these New York liberals defecting, is what he says.

[Host or Interviewer]

Thousands of individuals who grew up in the 1960s that started to question the wisdom of these liberal policies.

[Kathryn Wells]

And he says, slowly, slowly over time, very gradually, he became one of those people. In any case, fast forward a little bit. He's living in Houston, kind of a garden variety existence, and something happens that sends him on this entirely new path. Basically, he and his wife move to a new neighborhood. They move from the suburbs into the downtown area, more urban.

[Host or Interviewer]

And in 1990, when we went to vote for the first time in our new neighborhood, I realized that the Republican Party had not fielded a candidate to oppose the Democrat incumbent running for Congress. This is a district that has almost 600,000 people, and you don't have a choice. You've only got one person running.

[Kathryn Wells]

Bloom decided to run himself.

[Host or Interviewer]

I lost. That was no great surprise to anyone.

[Kathryn Wells]

He actually lost by 32 points.

[Host or Interviewer]

But along the way, something really unusual.

[Kathryn Wells]

Happened during that campaign. He and his wife Lark, you know, they decided they were going to go meet voters in their district. They got a giant printout of all of the addresses in the 18th congressional.

[Host or Interviewer]

District, what was then called a walking list.

[Kathryn Wells]

And they just started going door to.

[Host or Interviewer]

Door, meeting people, handing out literature, and.

[Kathryn Wells]

They'D walk down, say, Oak Street.

[Host or Interviewer]

I would take the even side of Oak street, and my wife would take the odd numbered side of Oak street, and we would start to walk. And.

[Kathryn Wells]

And he says very quickly, they realized that the district's shape was funny. Some houses on one side of the street would be in the district, and then houses on the other side wouldn't. And sometimes the district would snake down A highway catch an apartment complex, come back. It just didn't make sense. This is Lark Bloom, wife of Edward Bloom. It was peculiar because we had maps.

[Narrator]

That we had to follow.

[Kathryn Wells]

And it was very odd the way.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some streets were in the districts and some weren't.

[Narrator]

Took a while for it all to.

[Kathryn Wells]

Really sink in as to how this could happen.

[Host or Interviewer]

After, I guess, about a week of this, we realized that neighbors had been separated almost house by house because of their race.

[Kathryn Wells]

He comes to believe that the reason this was done was for the explicit purpose to create a majority African American district. This isn't untrue.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

This act flows from a clear and simple wrong.

[Kathryn Wells]

Part of the reason this was done was the Voting Rights act of 1965.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color.

[Kathryn Wells]

This act was a giant step forward in civil rights. You know, one of the primary things it did is eliminate barriers to voting, like poll taxes and literacy tests. All these, you know, strategies that had been used to keep minorities voting. And then this other thing it did, sort of in a roundabout way, through a series of interpretations, is it encouraged the creation of districts where the majority of voters were minorities. And that's because, you know, one of the strategies that had been used previously to sort of dilute the minority vote was to take minority communities, and they called it cracking. They sort of split them apart into many different districts so that they were never in the majority enough to elect a representative.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Kathryn Wells]

So the Voting Rights act tried to correct that. The 18th congressional district was one of these majority minority districts.

[Host or Interviewer]

The district was drawn by the Texas legislature to have a slight African American majority. I think about 51% African American.

[Kathryn Wells]

But this was the problem. According to Bloom, the way they got to that African American majority was by creating this district that zigzagged all over the city and cut through neighborhoods I could not understand.

[Host or Interviewer]

People lived close together. They sent their kids to the neighborhood schools. They shopped in the neighborhood shopping centers. They were worried about neighborhood issues. To break these neighborhoods apart by race seemed so wrong to me.

[Kathryn Wells]

In his mind, this law was actually not limiting discrimination, but actually perpetuating it. Well, yeah, and I don't know what an the average person, upon realizing this.

[Host or Interviewer]

Would have done, but I decided to file a lawsuit.

[Kathryn Wells]

He decided to sue the state of.

[Host or Interviewer]

Texas, called a few friends who lived.

[Kathryn Wells]

In the 18th district and a few other districts in Texas, an African American.

[Host or Interviewer]

A Hispanic, and an Asian. I kept looking and looking and looking until I found a lawyer that I.

[Kathryn Wells]

Could afford $7,000 a month.

[Host or Interviewer]

We filed A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Texas redistricting plan.

[Kathryn Wells]

The basic charge was, yes, the voting rights act was good in its day, but now it was being used as this excuse to segregate people into racially polarized districts.

[Host or Interviewer]

It worked its way through the lower courts and to my shock and surprise, in 1995.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

We'll hear argument now. Number 94805. George W. Bush versus Alvira.

[Host or Interviewer]

The supreme court took it up and.

[Kathryn Wells]

You went to oral arguments.

[Host or Interviewer]

Yeah, we all did, Mr. Chief justice.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

And may it please the court.

[Host or Interviewer]

So there we all are. Our opponents step to the lectern and.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Issue in this direct appeal is the constitutionality of three congressional districts.

[Host or Interviewer]

They make their arguments that the court.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Believes low erroneously ruled were racially gerrymandered.

[Kathryn Wells]

Texas basically said, y', all, we have to put people together by race.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

The Texas legislature has the obligation to satisfy federal requirements, and the voting rights act is a federal requirement.

[Kathryn Wells]

Like, remember the Voting rights Act. We're trying to make sure that there are enough minorities in this district so that they have a chance to elect a representative.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Then our advocate, Mr. Choi, we'll hear from you.

[Host or Interviewer]

Made his argument with regard to the.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Point that was just being made.

[Kathryn Wells]

Bloom's lawyer basically said, but look at the map. The map is bizarre. And the only reason it could have gotten this way is because you're only thinking about race. Only race. Think about it. That seems messed up. Isn't that messed up?

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

It doesn't matter what your ultimate goal is. You cannot use certain forbidden tools. Race is forbidden by the 14th amendment to be used in as a tool. But in his example, the people, St.

[Host or Interviewer]

Mary's you know, it's a very tense situation.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I'm not asking about this situation. Do you know any other situation in the law in which we allow race to be used as a surrogate for any unconstitutional but to use it as a more thoughtful racism. How is this done? I thought that's how you said this. Did you concede that or did you.

[Kathryn Wells]

Say it would require strict scrutiny?

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

You did say that, didn't you? Let me explain. Well, did you say that or not? If. Let me find out. Did you say that or not?

[Kathryn Wells]

So in the end, the supreme court gives out this very hair splitty decision that I think gets at this deeper question that in our society and in our discourse, we just haven't figured out how to talk about in a way. And it basically said this. You know, look, if you're defining race just as the color of someone's skin, the government cannot use that in any way, that's against the Constitution. On the other hand, if you take this wider view and you look at race in the context of history, social context, then how can the government address discrimination without taking race into account? They have to. So it's this difficult balance. You can't look at race, but you have to look at race. And the Supreme Court says to Texas, look, all you're doing in this case is sorting people based on how they're labeled on a census. You're not looking at that wider context. You're not looking at if these communities live next to each other, if they share common interests. You're just sorting them based on race alone. And that's not good enough. You can't do that.

[Host or Interviewer]

When the opinion came down, the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. Five to four. That was quite a day. The day that we won that lawsuit.

[Narrator]

I was, I've got the world on.

[Host or Interviewer]

A string, hooked forever.

[Kathryn Wells]

After that, Edward Bloom decided that this would be his thing.

[Host or Interviewer]

It became a passion.

[Kathryn Wells]

He would use the courts to try to strike down every race based policy he could.

[Host or Interviewer]

The legal team was taken on the road. I recruited plaintiffs in New York, Virginia, South Carolina to challenge congressional district plans, and we won in each of those states.

[Kathryn Wells]

He helped sue school districts in Florida.

[Host or Interviewer]

And Texas to end the use of racial quotas in K through 12 magnet schools.

[Kathryn Wells]

He went after affirmative action in Houston. City contracting.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Today, Houston could become the first city to kill affirmative action.

[Kathryn Wells]

That one was actually a ballot initiative and it failed.

[Host or Interviewer]

But I've been the architect of over two decades, dozen lawsuits, six of which.

[Kathryn Wells]

Six made it to the Supreme Court, including in 2013 in a 5 to 4 vote. 5 to 4, very divided court. The Supreme Court today struck down a key part of the Voting Rights act of 1965.

[Narrator]

Supreme Court today struck down a very.

[Kathryn Wells]

Important part of the Voting Rights act, that key 1965 landmark law. It's considered one of the most important.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

Important pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed.

[Kathryn Wells]

Shelby county versus Holder. This decision gutted the Voting Rights act. Specifically. There was this part of it that said states and counties with a history of discrimination have to check with the federal government first before they go about changing their voting laws. Basically, the federal government was saying, look, you've been up to all this stuff now. We're watching you. The Supreme Court said, you know, times have changed. That list was made a long time ago and it's outdated.

[Host or Interviewer]

This decision restores an important constitutional order to our system of government.

[Kathryn Wells]

This was Bloom's biggest victory.

[Host or Interviewer]

When Shelby county came down, I burst into tears.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think a lot of people burst into tears when that came down, you know.

[Host or Interviewer]

Yeah. And I understand it.

[Kathryn Wells]

It is deeply disturbing.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

I am deeply disappointed, Deeply disappointed.

[Host or Interviewer]

Disappointed with the court's decision in this matter.

[Kathryn Wells]

This decision is a betrayal of the American people.

[Host or Interviewer]

It is a game changer.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

During the civil rights movement, people died for the precious right to vote.

[Kathryn Wells]

This is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, Texas.

[Lane Lewis (Gay Activist)]

I would like to have the Supreme Court justices go back in time. Go back in time and march with those who marched after Bloody Sunday from Selma to Montgomery. Ed Bloom has a right to his opinion. It doesn't mean that it has to be the opinion of the United States.

[Host or Interviewer]

I understand that people were, you know, gravely upset. I also know that there were people who were gravely relieved and gravely gratified.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. But I think what gets a lot of people is that you look at these civil rights videos and you see tens of thousands, 40,000 people in the streets marching. And you hold that. And if you make a split screen in your mind, you hold that. Thousands, tens of thousands of people on one side, on the other side, you. One guy. It does make you ask basic questions about democracy.

[Host or Interviewer]

That's a false paradigm. That may be your split screen, but that's really not the reality of all of this. Look, in 1964 and 1965, America was held hostage by the legacies of slavery and the chokehold of Jim Crow. Fast forward to 2006, the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. The chokehold had gone away. African Americans in the Deep south registered to vote in numbers that often exceeded whites, participated in elections in numbers that exceeded whites. In terms of electoral opportunities, we have come 180 degrees from 1965.

[Jad Abumrad]

We turn those degrees because of the law which you've helped overturn. And we don't know to what degree that is. The psychology of America changing or the fact that we had a law that kept people in line. And now that law is gone. And now we see voter ID laws coming back into play, which I think any, like, sane person would admit is an attempt, a blatant attempt, to disenfranchise people. So it feels a little bit strange to. I mean, I completely agree with you. Things have gotten better. At the same time, I think, well, that was because of the law that's now gone.

[Host or Interviewer]

Look, laws change, laws evolve, and at some point, they need to come to an end.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so just to jump back in, something we haven't actually talked about yet is our original question. How does this actually happen? How does it Work. How is one person able to be so effective?

[Host or Interviewer]

To do this work, you need a computer, a printer, a cell phone. That's really about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, who pays for all the lawyer fees?

[Kathryn Wells]

And who do you go to?

[Host or Interviewer]

Well, there are individuals that know of my work. There are foundations.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so he's a 501, like the NAACP and Lambda Legal that funded the Lawrence vs Texas case. And if you're a 501C3 public charity as he is, you don't have to reveal your donors to the public. We do know a couple of his donors, though, and they're wealthy, very conservative foundations. So in the end, what he does is just sort of a more, maybe a more strategic or sophisticated version of what Lane Lewis did in the first story. Like in this case that he just lost last week. He knew he wanted to challenge affirmative action. So the first thing he did was sort of do a casting call.

[Narrator]

He set out to find the perfect white student. He set up a website called utnotfair.org.

[Kathryn Wells]

He made a recruiting video.

[Host or Interviewer]

It's time for UT to stop using race as a factor in the admissions policy.

[Kathryn Wells]

Pretty budget. It's just him looking at the camera in front of a poster that says ut. Not fair.

[Host or Interviewer]

I encourage all high school students who have been rejected from UT to [e-mail] Tell us your story.

[Kathryn Wells]

And then he started talking to the people who responded.

[Host or Interviewer]

I think I ended up with about 175 responses. Of those, about 100 were viable.

[Jad Abumrad]

With the 75 you threw out, just like, oh, spooky. Flat out racist.

[Host or Interviewer]

Yeah, well, just didn't think they would be sympathetic.

[Kathryn Wells]

So he whittled the hundred down to seven that he thought would be sympathetic.

[Host or Interviewer]

Of those seven, there were one or two that, you know, did not really want to go forward.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like, I don't want the attention.

[Kathryn Wells]

Or they were fearful of, you know, the backlash. Anyway, to make a long story short, he ended up finding Abby Fischer because a friend of his called and said, hey, my daughter just got rejected from ut. I heard you were looking. I think I'm a very, like, a very, like, introverted person. And so I feel like sometimes it's a lot of pressure, but I think in the end it's totally worth it. And. And to be able to have a voice in this and to know that my voice is making a difference is really rewarding. She seemed like the perfect plaintiff. Strawberry blonde hair, she's petite. She's kind of shy in front of the camera in a good way. But last week they lost so we talked to him before all this happened, so we weren't able to get a reaction from him. But he did tell an Austin newspaper that the night after the decision came down, he had three glasses of wine, he took an Ambien, and he thought about these particular lyrics in a Billy Joel song.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Lost a lot of fights, but it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Taught me how to lose.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay. The song's called Keeping the Faith.

[Host or Interviewer]

I'm a long distance runner. If there's something just emblematic about my personality, I run long distances.

[Kathryn Wells]

He says he's definitely not done. He actually already has two more cases against affirmative action in the works.

[Host or Interviewer]

I have retained counsel to litigate Harvard's admissions policies and University of North Carolina's admissions policies.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm sorry, it just doesn't strike anyone. I mean, forget the politics. Whether you're on Bloom's side or not, just the tactic doesn't strike anyone as, like, fishy.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

I resist giving Ed Bloom that much credit.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Ellie Mistelligan, our legal editor.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

I would say that fundamentally he's just implementing a strategy that was perfected by the people he now ironically seeks to disenfranchise. Right. This is civil rights movement 101. He's got laws that he doesn't like that he knows he can't overturn through an election. Remember this? Bloom's a failed congressional candidate. He had that lust for political power. He couldn't get it through the electoral system, but he found this other way to do it. This is exactly what the civil rights movement did.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay, so to me, this is one of the most fascinating things about this story. If we go back, do you remember this case? There's a famous case called Plessy versus Ferguson.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sort of. No, not really.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Plessy v. Ferguson, I think, is a good example.

[Kathryn Wells]

This is Susan Karl, law professor at.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

American University, Washington College of law.

[Kathryn Wells]

Okay. Plessy versus Ferguson, 1892.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

So that was a case where the state of Louisiana had adopted a new separate cars law which said that people of color and white people could not ride in the same train cars.

[Kathryn Wells]

And if you've heard the story, this is how it goes.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Somebody named Homer Plessy, a black man.

[Kathryn Wells]

Sits down in a white car.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

He is arrested, and he decides to sue.

[Kathryn Wells]

And his case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Now, the thing about that case is that it was a total setup.

[Jad Abumrad]

What do you mean?

[Kathryn Wells]

So if we go back, when Louisiana passed that law requiring separate cars, early civil rights groups were obviously horrified by this, but the railroad companies were actually mad about this.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Too, because they thought it would be much more expensive to run the trains if they had to add additional trains so they'd have white cars and cars of color.

[Kathryn Wells]

And so civil rights activists and the.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Railroad companies, they recruited somebody named Homer Plessy, who was 7/8 white, 1/8 African American.

[Kathryn Wells]

And they sent him to go sit in a white car on a train.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

He got into a first class white people's car and they sent somebody to go arrest him.

[Kathryn Wells]

Like they got a off duty police officer or something.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Well, they actually hired a detective. You could do that at the time. You could hire a private detective to make an arrest. And so, so they hired that person too.

[Kathryn Wells]

So Plessy gets onto the train, the conductor comes by, and Plessy's like, just thought I should let you know I'm actually an eighth black. And the conductor says, well, in that case, you're going to need to be on the other car in this train. Homer Plessy says, I'm good, actually, I'm going to be staying right here. And the conductor says, no, really, you have to move. And Homer Plessis says, no, really, not going to. And things get heated. And eventually this detective that they've hired comes in and arrests him.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

And they brought a lawsuit.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's amazing.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

The whole thing is cooked, starting with the arrest to challenge the separate cars law. And they were able to get it up to the U.S. supreme Court. And they were hoping that they would be able to establish that the idea of separating the races was unconstitutional. But unfortunately, they miscalculated and the court.

[Kathryn Wells]

Ruled that the law was constitutional.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

And what they got instead was separate but equal.

[Kathryn Wells]

Totally backfired. But it was this early example of this other way. You know, if you can find a plaintiff or create a plaintiff, you might be able to bypass the legislature and go to the Supreme Court instead. The NAACP later picked up on this.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

They were the true geniuses. They perfected it. And they perfected it under circumstances where victories were highly unlikely.

[Kathryn Wells]

For example, in the early 1900s, they'd do things like send a black guy and a white guy all over New York City to segregated theaters and see.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

If one of them was prevented from being seated.

[Kathryn Wells]

And if they were, they would sue.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Those theaters and win victories that way.

[Kathryn Wells]

Then there was this other law in Louisville, Kentucky that said nobody could buy.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

A house or live on a block in which white people lived if they were African American.

[Kathryn Wells]

So they recruited a white guy to sell a house to a black guy, and then they had the black guy refuse to take the house. So the white guy could say, you.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Said you would buy the house, but now you're reneging on it. And the African American said, I'm not buying the house because I can't live there.

[Kathryn Wells]

White guy sues the black guy again.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

It was a manufactured case. It was one of the NAACP's first victories. And that's the case where Justice Holmes said in a dissent that he ended up not publishing, hey, wait a minute. This isn't even a real case. At the time, anything that involved manufacturing a case or fomenting litigation, all of.

[Kathryn Wells]

Those things were so not just unethical, but actually illegal.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

Yes, criminally illegal.

[Kathryn Wells]

It was seen as something like how we see ambulance chasing today.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

The lawyers for the NAACP were very aware of these statutes, and this came.

[Kathryn Wells]

To a head in the 1950s. The NAACP wanted to get the court to end segregated schools. Basically, they wanted to overturn Plessy versus Ferguson. And the way they were doing this, they, you know, they needed plaintiffs. So the way they were looking for plaintiffs is going to meetings with parents and sort of quietly, you know, subtly trying to ask parents if they wanted to be the face of these cases. Now, Virginia knew that they were doing this, and they tightened up these regulations that said, you know, you can't drum up litigation to try to stop them from doing this. So the NAACP sued, and they took this issue all the way to the Supreme Court.

[Joseph Quinn (Deputy Sheriff)]

Test litigation is essential because no matter how illegal it is, public officials are free.

[Kathryn Wells]

And in that case, the Supreme Court said, actually, manufacturing litigation is a form of political expression.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Kathryn Wells]

And it is totally okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like free speech, basically.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yeah. Like, it's a way of expressing your political viewpoint. And test case litigation exploded after this.

[Susan Karl (Law Professor)]

And in the 60s and 70s, a lot of other movements, the women's movement, poor people's movement, saw the success the civil rights movement was having with these strategies, and they adopted them as well.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now, I guess that includes Ed Bloom.

[Kathryn Wells]

Yeah.

[Host or Interviewer]

The founding principles of the civil rights movement have been embraced by the vast majority of Americans in this country. And those founding principles. Those founding principles guide these lawsuits. That basic, fundamental guiding principle of the civil rights movement and how it needs to be applied today.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

I am. That's. I can't say what I think of that. On family. On family radio. That is not accurate. Bloom is not carrying the standard forward for civil rights in America. That is not what he's doing.

[Jad Abumrad]

But Ellie says he is actually doing something that's deeply important to our political system.

[Ellie Mistelligan (Legal Editor)]

You look at the current election cycle, and I see a lot of People who agree with Ed Bloom, they agreed with him in a way that couldn't be expressed in the polls. They're out there. This is one way for that. And that happens. I think, again, that's another callback to the civil rights movement. When you have a minority population who believes in something, they just get trampled in popular elections. Okay, but do they still have a voice? Should they still have a voice? Should they still have a way to enact change on their behalf over the will of the majority? Again, that seems to me textbook what courts are supposed to be able to do to look out for the rights of the minorities, political minorities, more than kind of ethnic or racial or religious, and see that they are not being trampled by majoritarian tyranny. Ed Bloom is helping a minority of people who believe what he believes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. I am so not prepared for you saying any of this. This is really surprising to me. Thank you to Kathryn Wells. Our sincere thanks to her for reporting these two segments, and Ellie Mistahl, our legal editor. More Perfect is produced by me, Jad Abumrad, with Tobin Lowe, Kelsey Padgett and Susie Lechtenberg, who will take it from.

[Kathryn Wells]

Here with Soren Wheeler, Ellie Mostah, David Herrmann, Alex Overington, Karen Duffin, Sean Ramaswaram, Kathryn Wells, Bari Finkel, Andy Mills, Dylan Keefe and Michelle Harris. Special thanks to Dale Carpenter. His book Flagrant Conduct is all about Lawrence versus Texas. Thanks also to Lambda Legal, Lisa Hardaway, JD Doyle, Ari Berman and Amy Howe, and Guy Charles. Supreme Court audio is from Oye, a Free Law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. More Perfect is funded in part by the William and Flora Hewlett foundation, the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial foundation, and the Joyce Found.