22. Liberty, Equality, and the Thread That Ties Them Together

Dignity as a double helix

By now, we’ve walked through some of the most important turning points in the Court’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights and personal autonomy. We saw Casey redefine liberty as something bound up with dignity—the right to define one’s own identity. We saw Bowers refuse that same dignity to gay men. And we watched Romer and Lawrence begin to undo that damage, with rulings that felt like the law catching up—at least a little—with lived experience.

But here’s a puzzle that’s been building quietly in the background: when the Court protects someone’s liberty, isn’t it also saying something about their equality?

And when it says someone has been treated unequally, isn’t that often because their freedom to live authentically has been denied?

This is where constitutional scholar Kenji Yoshino steps in with one of the most useful frameworks I’ve come across: he says liberty and equality aren’t two separate rights at all. They’re two strands of the same cord. And the thing that binds them together is dignity.

He calls it a double helix, like DNA.

Liberty + Equality = Dignity

Let’s make this concrete.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court struck down Texas’s sodomy law on liberty grounds—privacy, autonomy, the right to be left alone in intimate matters. But the Court didn’t just say, “Let consenting adults do what they want.” It said laws like these work to “demean the lives” of gay people. That’s a dignity claim. And with it comes the clear suggestion that targeting gay people this way makes them unequal.

So while Lawrence officially rested on liberty, it also smuggled in equality through the back door—through the language of dignity.

Yoshino says that’s not accidental. It’s how many modern rights cases actually function. Whether the Court leans on liberty or equality in its written opinion, the real work is often being done by dignity—a moral and legal recognition that people deserve to live in ways that reflect who they are.

Dignity as a Bridge in a Divided Society

There’s another reason Yoshino’s framework matters—especially as we move into more polarized cases, like Obergefell and the religious liberty conflicts that follow.

In a diverse society, when courts rule in favor of one group (say, LGBTQ+ couples seeking marriage rights) other groups sometimes feel like their beliefs or freedoms are being sidelined. This is what Yoshino calls pluralism anxiety.

But instead of framing these cases as winners vs. losers, he suggests a different lens: what if the Court is trying to protect everyone’s dignity? What if it’s saying: you don’t have to agree with someone’s choices, but the Constitution still protects their right to live with equal respect?

That’s the hope behind dignity-based reasoning; it gives us a way to protect deeply personal freedoms without pretending we all agree, and without turning every conflict into a zero-sum game.

What to Watch for Next

As we move into Obergefell—the landmark case that recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right—this idea becomes front and center. In fact, you’ll see the word “dignity” appear over and over again in the majority opinion. And you’ll see that the Court doesn’t choose between liberty and equality. It uses both, held together by the same thread we’ve been tracing since Casey.

So here’s what I want you to keep in mind as we keep going:

• When you see the Court invoke liberty, ask: is there also an equality concern here?

• When it rules on equality, ask: is the underlying issue about someone’s freedom to live authentically?

• And when the Court uses the word dignity, pay attention. It’s often doing more work than the doctrine around it.

In the next post, we’ll see how all of this comes together in Obergefell—and how dignity becomes the heart of a constitutional transformation.

But for now, just sit with the idea that liberty and equality aren’t separate silos. They’re entwined. And dignity is what makes them whole.