Atlanta board OKs plans to demolish home at center of national gay rights case

Efforts to preserve a Virginia-Highland home at the center of a landmark 1980s gay rights ruling appear to have come up short.

Atlanta’s Board of Zoning Adjustment on Thursday approved the owner’s request to build a brand new house on their lot along Ponce de Leon Place and put a swimming pool in the yard.

Some local historians and LGBT activists sought to preserve the existing 1920s-era home, which played a key role in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that impacted the gay rights movement for decades.

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A landmark gay rights case began at this Atlanta home. Can locals save it?

November 3, 2026

In August 1982, local bartender Michael Hardwick was arrested after an Atlanta police officer entered the home and discovered him having sex with another man in his bedroom.

Both Hardwick and the other man were arrested on felony sodomy charges, kicking off a yearslong legal battle that went all the way to the high court.

Justices ruled 5-4 that state sodomy laws were constitutional, marking a major setback in the LGBTQ fight for equal protections.

The 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision stood for 17 years until it was overturned in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. Now, both cases are taught to virtually every law student.

While few Atlantans are aware of the home’s history, constitutional scholars say the case influenced a generation of gay and lesbian Americans.

The Supreme Court ruling had wide-ranging impacts on employment cases, custody battles and even the ability of same-sex couples to adopt children, said Fred Smith Jr., a Stanford Law School professor who lives in Atlanta.

“It’s a case that ruled that when it came to same-sex intimacy, even in one’s own bedroom, that the right to privacy didn’t apply there,” Smith said.

He was among a group of constitutional scholars who pushed to preserve the home, calling it an essential part of Atlanta’s LGBT history. More than 100 law professors from across the country signed on to a letter urging city officials to keep the home intact.

Zoning attorney Steve Rothman, who represents the homeowners, told the board his clients bought the house about a year ago.

But black mold, structural issues and “cheaply done” renovations have made it cost-prohibitive to rehabilitate, Rothman said, and his clients want to build a new house on the lot instead.

He noted several changes had been made to the property over the years, including the addition of a second floor about a decade ago.

“The addition was inexpensive for investment purposes, it appears, and there’s been deferred maintenance on the house,” Rothman said.

At one point, the home was divided into multiple apartment units, he said.

“This is not the same house as it was in 1982,” he said.

Rothman said like many, his clients were unaware of the property’s historical significance when they purchased it last year. He said the couple is open to placing a historic marker noting the site’s role in the Supreme Court case.

But he argued that Hardwick’s 1982 arrest shouldn’t prevent his clients from building on their own property, especially considering the home has been repeatedly altered in the four decades since.

On Monday, Atlanta’s City Council approved a resolution asking the director of the Urban Design Commission to nominate the property as a landmark building. But Rothman said his clients heard nothing from the city, and argued waiting for a historic designation could take months, if not longer.

Smith, who spoke at Thursday’s zoning meeting, asked the board to delay its decision until the commission’s director decides whether to nominate the property as a historic site.

But Board of Zoning Adjustment Chair Michael Williams said it would be “disingenuous” to keep the couple waiting on a process he described as “vague.”

“Who knows what the historic designation may uncover?” he asked.