ASHINGTON, June 27 — In an immediate application of its new protective approach to gay rights, the Supreme Court today vacated the sodomy conviction of a Kansas teenager who received a 17-year sentence for having oral sex with a younger boy.

In a one-sentence order, the justices told the Kansas Court of Appeals to reconsider the conviction and sentence in light of the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that overturned a Texas sodomy law.

Unlike the Texas law, which applied only to sexual relations between same-sex partners, the Kansas law at issue is a variety of a statutory rape law, making sodomy with any child under the age of 16 a crime. Kansas, like other states with similar laws, treats the offense much more leniently, under a so-called Romeo and Juliet exception, if it involves a teenage couple, but only if the two teenagers are of opposite sex.

Matthew R. Limon had just turned 18 when he had consensual sex with a 14-year-old boy at the residential school for developmentally disabled youths where both were living. Had the younger child been a girl, the sentence would have been no longer than 15 months, instead of the 17 years for Mr. Limon.

Mr. Limon, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union's gay and lesbian rights project, challenged the Kansas law unsuccessfully in state court as a violation of equal protection.

"Making the penalty for a crime depend on sexual orientation is antithetical to the basic promise of the Equal Protection Clause," his lawyers said in his Supreme Court appeal, Limon v. Kansas, No. 02-583.

Mr. Limon has now served more than two years in prison, longer than the sentence that he would have received had his challenge succeeded. A lawyer for Mr. Limon, Matthew A. Coles, said today that he expected to ask the Kansas court simply to order Mr. Limon's release.

Mr. Coles said the Supreme Court order today was a significant demonstration of the breadth of the decision on Thursday in Lawrence v. Texas. While Mr. Limon's challenge to the Kansas law was based on equal protection, and the majority opinion in the Texas case was based not on that constitutional ground but on due process, it was evidently sweeping enough to encompass equal protection cases as well, Mr. Coles said in an interview.

"It's an example of how much is now going to open up," he said, adding, "When the court finds that gay relationships are protected by the Constitution, it's answering the equality questions as well."

These were some of the other developments at the court today:

Anti-Abortion Threats

Without comment, the justices refused to hear an appeal by two anti-abortion groups of an Oregon jury verdict that imposed liability for posters that identified doctors who performed abortions as "the deadly dozen" and "guilty of crimes against humanity."

The groups, the American Coalition of Life Activists and Advocates for Life Ministries, also compiled information about hundreds of abortion providers and supporters, which was posted on a Web site under the title "Nuremburg Files." As doctors were murdered or wounded, their names were crossed out or reprinted in gray type.

The posters and Web site appeared in the mid-1990's at a peak of anti-abortion violence, and three doctors who were depicted were later murdered. Four doctors, two abortion clinics and two abortion rights organizations sued under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which bars force and threats of force intended to prevent access to reproductive health services. The plaintiffs were awarded $500,000 in compensatory damages against each defendant and a total of $108.5 million in punitive damages.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, affirmed liability and the compensatory damages, while vacating the punitive damage award, in a 6-to-5 decision that rejected the organizations' argument that the posters and Web site were speech protected by the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit majority found the material to constitute "true threats" rather than protected speech.

Because the decision involved a federal law, the justices asked the Bush administration for its views on hearing the appeal, American Coalition of Life Activists v. Planned Parenthood, No. 02-563. In a brief this month, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson advised the court to turn down the case.

"Context is crucial in determining whether a true threat has been made," the brief said, adding that in this case, "the court applied a legal standard for distinguishing `true threats' from protected speech that is correct and consistent with this court's decisions."

Clean Water

The court agreed to decide a potentially important case from the Everglades concerning the the Clean Water Act. The question is whether a Florida agency can order pumping water from one side of a levee to another without first obtaining a federal permit under the water law.

Permits are required for activities that add pollutants to navigable waters. No pollutants are added to the water in this case, which involves miles of canals and levees in the Lake Okeechobee watershed. But the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ruled that because the water being pumped already had some pollutants, its transfer was an "addition" that required a permit.

The case, South Florida Water Management District v. Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, No. 02-626, began as a citizen suit against the district by a tribe and an environmental group.

In its appeal, the district is arguing that the 11th Circuit decision has expanded the scope of the water law and "federalizes local water management activities that have been left to the states through the 30 years" since it was enacted.