The U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in the country in the landmark decision Lawrence v. Texas.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution via the landmark case Marbury v. Madison. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

The early United States inherited sodomy laws which constitutionally outlawed a variety of sexual acts deemed illegal, illicit, unlawful, unnatural or immoral from the colonial-era based laws in the 17th century. While these laws often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex, many sodomy-related statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes, in some cases even including acts between married persons.

The following landmark court decisions in the United States contains landmark court decisions which changed the interpretation of existing law in the United States. Such a decision may settle the law in more than one way:

• establishing a significant new legal principle or concept;
• overturning prior precedent based on its negative effects or flaws in its reasoning;
• distinguishing a new principle that refines a prior principle, thus departing from prior practice without violating the rule of stare decisis;
• establishing a test or a measurable standard that can be applied by courts in future decisions.