Sodomy criminals no more: the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas may clear the records of those convicted under sodomy laws--including the one U.S. sodomy law left standing, in the military.

"Matthew R. Limon, having been found guilty of one count of criminal sodomy ... you are hereby sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections for a period of 206 months."

So ordered Kansas district court judge Richard M. Smith, sending Limon, at the time a teenager, to prison for 17 years for engaging in consensual oral sex with another male teen. Limon had just turned 18 at the time of his arrest. The other teen was nearly 15. Had Limon's partner been a girl, he would have faced just over a year in jail under the state's "Romeo and Juliet" law.

Since Smith's order in August 2000, Limon has been locked up in Kansas's Ellsworth Correctional Facility, hoping to win his release through appeal. On June 26 the U.S. Supreme Court may have given Limon, now 21, just the break he is looking for with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned laws against consensual same-sex sexual activity.

"What Lawrence means for Matthew Limon is, he should get out of jail," explains James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. "He's served three years in prison. It's been no picnic."

When the court handed down its decision in Lawrence, legal experts, activists, politicians, and pundits predicted sweeping gay rights reforms in legislatures, courtrooms, and the court of public opinion. But the ruling is also reopening cases previously deemed closed as well as boosting other cases on appeal.

Soon after the Lawrence decision, discharged Army lieutenant colonel Steve Loomis sued the government, citing Lawrence in his challenge to "don't ask, don't tell." The ACLU also acted quickly, filing briefs to add Lawrence to its arguments against Florida's ban on adoptions by gay parents, the University of Pittsburgh's refusal to offer partner benefits to gay employees, and the state of Alaska's refusal to provide domestic-partner benefits to government workers. The ACLU also is handling Limon's case, which, the day after ruling in Lawrence, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the conviction vacated and a state appeals court to reconsider.

"The arguments are different, but in all of these cases we think Lawrence helps significantly," Esseks says. He and other legal experts are less certain about the ruling's impact on family court matters, where a judge may have cited a sodomy statute as justification for stripping a gay parent of custody or visitation rights.

That was the case in the 1990s, when lesbian Sharon Bottoms lost court battles in Virginia for custody of her son.

"Generally, it's too late for those people," Esseks says. "They could go back to court and say there's been a change in circumstances, but the court would look at not only that the law has changed but at the fact that the kid has been with someone else for X number of years."

"The question for the courts is, What's in the child's best interest now?" says Jon Davidson, senior counsel with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the group that argued Lawrence.

Cases involving criminal convictions for consensual sodomy, possibly even convictions for soliciting sodomy, may be easier to reopen and clear away.

People convicted of sodomy have rarely faced the stiff sentence given to Limon, but felony convictions cause collateral damage. People convicted of sodomy may be barred from licensed professions, prohibited from voting, or required to register as a sex offender. Lawrence, Davidson says, provides the legal argument for expunging their records, voiding their convictions, and possibly, as Limon hopes, getting them sprung from prison.

"What is interesting about Lawrence is, the majority doesn't just reverse Bowers v. Hardwick," Davidson says, referring to the Supreme Court's 1986 ruling upholding sodomy statutes. "They said [Bowers] was wrong when it was decided and it was wrong now. So this decision has a retroactive effect."

That is what Loomis is counting on. The decorated Vietnam veteran, who is seeking $1.1 million in back pay, allowances, and retirement, was discharged eight days before his retirement, following an investigation into whether he engaged in consensual sex with another man, a violation of Article 125 in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And while Loomis is the first to use Lawrence to challenge his discharge, he almost certainly won't be the last.

"Filing supplemental briefs, revisiting cases--it's the normal course after a Supreme Court decision," Esseks says. "But the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence is quite an extraordinary event, and the broad impact is anything but normal."

Neff is managing editor of the Chicago Free Press.