Frank Kameny’s Appeal to the Supreme Court

Background: The U.S. government fired Frank Kameny, a civilian astronomer working for the U.S. Army Map Service, when the Civil Service Commission found he had once been arrested for lewd and indecent acts, a common misdemeanor charge against LGBTQ+ individuals at the time. Kameny waged a multiyear struggle to oppose government regulations against LGBTQ+ employees, including an appeal to the Supreme Court. This document is an excerpt from his petition to the Supreme Court. Kameny would go on to become an influential LGBTQ+ activist.

Preamble to Arguments

This case, involving matters never before examined by the courts, is of extreme importance to a very large number of American citizens. A rough but probably fair estimate … of the number of homosexuals in the United States, would have them making up 10% of our population at the very least—perhaps, at least some 15,000,000 people. . . .

It is because the government’s policies, particularly in the field of employment, are of such direct and personal concern to so large a minority, that this court is asked to direct that this case, involving, in large measure , a challenge to these policies, be given a full hearing in all of its aspects and ramifications. . . .

The government is not just another employer, and discharge from government employment is not discharge from just another job. . . . Discharge from Federal employment, unlike other discharges, bears an official stamp, in the minds of the majority of citizens.

Petitioner has, by this discharge, and by this debarment been branded, publicly and (if they are not reversed) permanently, by the majesty of the United States Government, as a dishonest person, and as an immoral person, neither of which he is. And he has been so branded without a shred of fact to bear out the accusations, and, more important, without a chance to defend himself in an impartial hearing.

 . . . It is possible, by a stroke of the pen, for one fallible appointing officer, through error, pressure, malice, prejudice, or irresponsibility, to destroy an employee’s reputation and his good name, his career and his profession, and to deprive him, often permanently, of his livelihood, with no recourse on his part. . . .

It has become abundantly clear that as much as it is in the public interest that many questions and issues relating to homosexuality be dealt with by the government realistically, civilizedly, and directly, the government is not going to deal with these matters at all, in any fashion, (except by further attempts at repression) unless forced to do so. Therefore petitioner, in this petition, seeks to attack the problem at its roots and at its sources, by challenging . . . the propriety, the legality, and the constitutionality of the government’s practices, procedures, and policies in regard to the employment of homosexuals.

Source: National Archives, Record Group 267, Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1772–2007, Petition for Writ of Certiorari—Number 676—Kameny v. Brucker, January 27, 1961, p. 14–18.