Loving v. Virginia

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Loving v. Virginia
Reference: 388 U.S. 1
Important Dates
Argued: Argued: April 10, 1967 Decided: June 12, 1967
Outcome
Supreme Court of Virginia reversed
Majority
Chief Justice Earl Warren • Hugo Black • William Brennan • Tom Clark • William O. Douglas • Abe Fortas • John Harlan II • Byron White
Concurring
Potter Stewart

Loving v. Virginia was a case decided on June 12, 1967, by the U.S. Supreme Court that held that Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriages violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

HIGHLIGHTS

The case: Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were married in 1958 in the District of Columbia and moved to Virginia where they were charged with violating a state law prohibiting interracial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail. They argued that the state law violated their rights to equal protection of citizenship incorporated into the states by the Fourteenth Amendment

The issue: Did Virginia's state statute prohibiting marriages between people of different races violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

The outcome: In a unanimous decision the Supreme Court ruled that the state law was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Why it matters: The Supreme Court ruled that Virginia's state law criminalizing interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion established that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state discrimination in the realm of marriage. The US Supreme Court relied on the reasoning in Loving when adjudicating the case Obergefell v. Hodges and ruled that states cannot discriminate against same-sex marriage. To read more about the legacy of the case, click here.

Background

Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a caucasian male, were married in the District of Columbia in June of 1958. Shortly after their wedding, the couple moved to Caroline County, Virginia, where they made their home. A Virginia circuit court, in October of 1958, indicted the Lovings for violating Virginia's state law that prohibited interracial marriages from being performed or recognized. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail each; however, the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence for 25 years provided that the Lovings moved out of the state and did not attempt to return to Virginia for 25 years. The judge stated in an opinion,

“

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

”

The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C., after their convictions to avoid incarceration. The Lovings, on November 6, 1963, filed a motion in a Virginia state court seeking to vacate the judgment against them and to set aside their sentences, arguing that the Virginia anti-miscegenation law violated the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court took no action on the motion, so in October of 1964, the Lovings filed a class action lawsuit in federal court requesting a three-judge panel to rule on the constitutionality of the Virginia statute. The court denied their motion on January 22, 1965. The Lovings appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. The federal panel agreed to continue the case on February 11, 1965 so that the Lovings could present their constitutional claims to the state supreme court. The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the constitutionality of the statute and, with modification, upheld the Lovings' sentences. The Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in December of 1966.

Oral argument

Oral argument was held on April 10, 1967. The case was decided on June 12, 1967.

Decision

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia and held that Virginia's state statute banning marriage between people of different races was unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous majority opinion and was joined by Justices Hugo Black, William Brennan, Tom Clark, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, John M. Harlan, Potter Stewart, and Byron White

Justice Potter Stewart wrote a concurring opinion.

Opinion

Majority opinion

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority opinion for the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court that held that Virginia's state law barring interracial marriages violated the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Equal protection clause

Chief Justice Earl Warren noted that the Virginia appellate court presented three arguments in support of the constitutionality of the statute. First, the state court advanced that Virginia's "legitimate purposes" for the law were "'to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens' ... to prevent 'the corruption of blood, a mongrel breed of citizens,' and 'the obliteration of racial pride.'" Next, the Virginia court also held that marriage was within the purview of state regulation under the Tenth Amendment. The Virginia Supreme Court argued that the only laws implicated by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment were "state penal laws containing an interracial element as part of the definition of the offense" and that these laws "must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race."

Chief Justice Warren rejected the equal application argument advanced by Virginia, writing that "[b]ecause we reject the notion that the mere 'equal application' of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's proscription of all invidious racial discriminations, we do not accept the State's contention that these statutes should be upheld if there is any possible basis for concluding that they serve a rational purpose ... the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race."

Chief Justice Warren argued that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to eliminate racial discrimination within the states. He argued that the state law had no purpose other than racial discrimination:

“

The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States ... There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race ... the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the 'most rigid scrutiny,' ... and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate ... There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. ... We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

”

Due process clause

Chief Justice Warren, in rejecting the equal protection argument, also noted that the freedom to marry was an essential liberty within the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, Justice Warren reversed the Lovings' convictions under the Virginia anti-miscegenation law. He argued that the law was directly subversive of the principle of equality:

“

To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

”

Concurring opinion

Justice Potter Stewart wrote a two-sentence concurrence in this case. He wrote, "I have previously expressed the belief that 'it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor.' Because I adhere to that belief, I concur in the judgment of the Court."

Impact

In Loving, the US Supreme Court held that state laws criminalizing interracial marriage are unconstitutional violations of the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's opinion in Loving was cited in the US Supreme Court's 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges which held that states must recognize same-sex marriages.

See also

• Supreme Court of the United States
• History of the Supreme Court
• Obergefell v. Hodges

External links

• Supreme Court of the United States