Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1

The petition assails Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code insofar as it criminalizes homosexual acts as an unnatural offense. Petitioners argue that the provision in its present form violates several fundamental rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, namely the right to privacy, right to dignity, equality, liberty, and right to freedom of expression. Petitioners contend that sexual orientation is a natural corollary of gender identity and is protected under the constitution. The court unanimously declared the law unconstitutional in so far as it criminalizes consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex. It found that the discrimination and unequal treatment meted out to the LGBT community as a separate class of citizens is unconstitutional for being violative of the constitutional right to equality regardless of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Moreover, the manifest arbitrariness of a provision of law is also a ground for declaring a law unconstitutional. The law fails to make a distinction between consensual and non-consensual sexual acts between competent adults. It trenches a discordant note in respect of the liberty of persons belonging to the LGBT community by subjecting them to societal pariah and dereliction.