Writing for the Court, Justice Byron White ruled that the Constitution does not confer a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. The Court rejected the notion that Hardwick’s case was analogous to previous privacy cases decided by the Supreme Court, asserting that “[n]one of the fundamental rights announced in this Court’s prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case”. The Court pointed to historical evidence , noting that sodomy laws have “ancient roots,” and were criminalized under common law as well as by all thirteen original states at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, and in nearly all states when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. Justice White argued, “[a]gainst this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious” .

Hardwick argued that the privacy of the home should afford constitutional protection. Justice White distinguished Hardwick’s case from the facts of Stanley v. Georgia (1969), which was anchored in the rights of the First Amendment. He explained, “[v]ictimless crimes, such as the possession and use of illegal drugs, do not escape the law where they are committed at home.” Justice White was also unpersuaded by the argument that laws based solely on morality are unconstitutional, stating that the law “is constantly based on notions of morality”. Ultimately, the Court concluded that there was insufficient reason to find that the substantive reach of the Due Process Clause should extend to cover consensual homosexual sodomy.