Martin v. Ziherl

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Martin v. Ziherl
Court	Supreme Court of Virginia
Full case name	Muguet S. Martin v. Kristopher Joseph Ziherl
Decided	January 14, 2005
Citation	269 Va. 35; 607 S.E.2d 367; 2005 Va. LEXIS 7
Case history
Prior actions	Demurrer sustained, Richmond Circuit Court
Holding
Plaintiff's lawsuit for the intentional transmission of herpes was not barred by the judicial rule against recovering for injuries suffered while engaging in illegal conduct, because Virginia's criminal prohibition against sexual intercourse between unmarried individuals violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Richmond Circuit Court reversed and remanded.
Court membership
Chief judge	Leroy Rountree Hassell, Sr.
Associate judges	Lawrence L. Koontz, Jr., Cynthia D. Kinser, Donald W. Lemons, Elizabeth B. Lacy, Barbara Milano Keenan, G. Steven Agee
Case opinions
Majority	Lacy, joined by Koontz, Kinser, Lemons, Keenan, Agee
Concurrence	Hassell
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Va. Code § 18.2-344

Martin v. Ziherl, 607 S.E.2d 367 (Va. 2005), was a decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia holding that the Virginia criminal law against fornication (sexual acts between unmarried people) was unconstitutional. The court's decision followed the 2003 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, which established the constitutionally-protected right of adults to engage in private, consensual sex.

Virginia's law against fornication was repealed on March 4, 2020.^[1]