Loving v. Virginia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 10, 1967 Decided June 12, 1967
Full case name: Richard Perry Loving, Mildred Jeter Loving v. Virginia Citations: 388 U.S. 1; 87 S. Ct. 1817; 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 1082 Prior history: Defendants convicted, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 6, 1959); motion to vacate judgment denied, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 22, 1959); affirmed in part, reversed and remanded, 147 S.E.2d 78 (Va. 1966) Argument: Link to Oral Argument
Holding
The Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restriction on marriage in the United States.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Abe Fortas
Case opinions
Majority by: Warren Joined by: unanimous court Concurrence by: Stewart
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Va. Code §§ 20-58, 20-59

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)^[1], was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The Supreme Court of the United States (sometimes colloquially referred to by the acronym SCOTUS[1]) is the highest judicial body in the United States and leads the federal judiciary. ... is the 100th day of the year (101st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 22nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Anti-miscegenation laws (also known as miscegenation laws) were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes also interracial sex. ... The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 of Virginia, United States, was a law that had required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth, and prevented marriage between white persons and non-white persons. ... For other uses, see Race. ... Matrimony redirects here. ... For the swing saxophonist and occasional singer, see Earle Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was a California district attorney of Alameda County, the 20th Attorney General of California, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969). ... Hugo Black Hugo LaFayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1937 - 1971). ... William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. ... Thomas Campbell Clark (September 23, 1899 – June 13, 1977) was United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1949-1967). ... John Marshall Harlan II (May 20, 1899 – December 29, 1971) was an American jurist. ... William Joseph Brennan, Jr. ... Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. ... Byron Raymond White (June 8, 1917 – April 15, 2002) won fame both as a football running back and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. ... Abe Fortas (June 19, 1910–April 5, 1982) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. ... Amendment XIV in the National Archives The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments (known as the Reconstruction Amendments), first intended to secure rights for former slaves. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... A landmark decision is the outcome of a legal case (often thus referred to as a landmark case) that establishes a precedent that either substantially changes the interpretation of the law or that simply establishes new case law on a particular issue. ... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Miscegenation is an archaic term invented in 1863 to describe people of different human races (usually one European and one African) producing offspring; the use of this term is invariably restricted to those who believe that the category race is meaningful when applied to human beings. ... The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 of Virginia, United States, was a law that had required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth, and prevented marriage between white persons and non-white persons. ... Holding The court affirmed the conviction of the plaintiff and declared Alabamas anti-miscegenation statute constitutional. ... For other uses, see Race. ... Matrimony redirects here. ...

Facts

The plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter (a woman of African and Rappahannock Indian descent)^[2][3] and Richard Perry Loving (a white man), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June of 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and a non-white person. Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which defined "miscegenation" as a felony punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. On 6 January 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that A plaintiff, also known as a claimant or complainer, is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an action) before a court. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... The Rappahannock are a tribe of Native Americans. ... Whites redirects here. ... ... The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 of Virginia, United States, was a law that required the racial makeup of persons to be recorded at birth, and prevented marriage between white persons and non-white persons. ... Caroline County is the name of several counties in the United States: Caroline County, Maryland Caroline County, Virginia This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (May 11, 1752 - January 22, 1840) was a German physiologist and anthropologist. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ...

The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia, and on 6 November 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment. This set in motion a series of lawsuits which ultimately reached the Supreme Court. On 28 October 1964, after their motion still had not been decided, the Lovings began a class action suit in the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. On 22 January 1965, the three-judge district court decided to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Soon to be Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice, Harry L. Carrico wrote an opinion for the court upholding the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the criminal convictions. Amendment XIV in the National Archives The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments (known as the Reconstruction Amendments), first intended to secure rights for former slaves. ...

Ignoring United States Supreme Court precedent, Carrico cited as authority the Virginia Supreme Court's own decision in Naim vs. Naim (1955) and also argued that the case at hand was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause because both the white and the non-white spouse were punished equally for the "crime" of "miscegenation", an argument similar to that made by the United States Supreme Court in 1883 in Pace v. Alabama Holding The court affirmed the conviction of the plaintiff and declared Alabamas anti-miscegenation statute constitutional. ...

In 1966, the Presbyterian Church took a strong stand stating that they do not condemn or prohibit interracial marriages. The church found "no theological grounds for condemning or prohibiting marriage between consenting adults merely because of racial origin". Months before the Supreme Court ruling on Loving v. Virginia the Roman Catholic Church joined the movement, supporting interracial couples in their struggle for recognition of their right to marriage. Presbyterianism is part of the Reformed churches family of denominations of Christian Protestantism based on the teachings of John Calvin which traces its institutional roots to the Scottish Reformation, especially as led by John Knox. ... Catholic Church redirects here. ...

Key Precedents

Prior to Loving v. Virginia there were several monumental cases. In Pace v. Alabama (1883) the Supreme Court ruled that the conviction of an Alabama couple for interracial sex, affirmed on appeal by the Alabama Supreme Court, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Interracial extramarital sex was deemed a felony, where as extramarital sex ("adultery or fornication") was only a misdemeanor. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the criminalization of interracial sex was not a violation of the equal protection clause because whites and non-whites were punished in equal measure for the offense of engaging in interracial sex. The court did not need to affirm the constitutionality of the ban on interracial marriage that was also part of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law, since the plaintiff, Mr. Pace, had chosen not to appeal that section of the law. After Pace v. Alabama, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws banning marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged until the 1920s. Holding The court affirmed the conviction of the plaintiff and declared Alabamas anti-miscegenation statute constitutional. ... The Fourteenth Amendment may refer to the: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - contains the due process and equal protection clauses. ... Congressman John Bingham of Ohio was the principal framer of the Equal Protection Clause. ...

The plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving

In Kirby v. Kirby (1921), Mr. Kirby asked the state of Arizona for an annulment of his marriage. He charged that his marriage was invalid because his wife was of ‘negro’ descent, thus violating the state's anti-miscegenation law. The Arizona Supreme Court judged Mrs. Kirby’s race by observing her physical characteristics and determined that she was of mixed race, thereby granting Mr. Kirby’s annulment (Pascoe 49-51).

In the Monks case (Estate of Monks, 4. Civ. 2835, Records of California Court of Appeals, Fourth district), the Superior Court of San Diego County in 1939 decided to invalidate the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Allan Monks because she was deemed to have "one eight negro blood". The court case involved a legal challenge over the conflicting wills that had been left by the late Allan Monks, an old one in favor of a friend named Ida Lee and a newer one in favor of his wife. Lee's lawyers charged that the marriage of the Monks, which had taken place in Arizona, was invalid under Arizona state law because Marie Antoinette was "a Negro" and Alan had been white. Despite conflicting testimony by various expert witnesses, the judge defined Mrs. Monks race by relying on the anatomical "expertise" of a surgeon. The judge ignored the arguments of an anthropologist and a biologist that it was impossible to tell a person's race from physical characteristics. (Pascoe, p. 56).

Monks then challenged the Arizona anti-miscegenation law itself, taking her case to the California Court of Appeals, Fourth District. Monks's lawyers pointed out that the anti-miscegenation law effectively prohibited Monks as a mixed-race person from marrying anyone: "As such, she is prohibited from marrying a negro or any descendant of a negro, a Mongolian or an Indian, a Malay or a Hindu, or any descendants of any of them. Likewise ... as a descendant of a negro she is prohibited from marrying a Caucasian or a descendant of a Caucasian...." The Arizona anti-miscegenation statute thus prohibited Monks from contracting a valid marriage in Arizona, and was therefore an unconstitutional constraint on her liberty. The court, however, dismissed this argument as inapplicable, since the case presented involved not two mixed-race spouses but a mixed-race and a white spouse: "Under the facts presented the appellant does not have the benefit of assailing the validity of the statute." (Pascoe, 60). Dismissing Monks's appeal in 1942, the United States Supreme Court refused to reopen the issue.

The turning point came with Perez v. Sharp (1948), also known as Perez v. Lippold. In Perez, the Supreme Court of California recognized that interracial bans on marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Justices of the Supreme Court of California (circa May 2005). ...

Decision

The Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation satute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote: Due process of law is a legal concept that ensures the government will respect all of a persons legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights, when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. ... Congressman John Bingham of Ohio was the principal framer of the Equal Protection Clause. ...

The Supreme Court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy: White supremacy is a racist ideology which holds the belief that white people are superior to other races. ...

Despite this Supreme Court ruling, such laws rested unenforced in several states until 2000 when Alabama became the last state to remove its law against mixed-race marriage. This article is about the U.S. State. ...

Future implications

See also: Interracial marriage

See also: Same-sex marriage in the United States

See also: Jim Crow laws

The definition of a marriage and what constitutes a family was reconsidered by society after the decision of Loving v. Virginia. According to David Coolidge, "As of thirty years ago people define marriage as something between people of the same race and this was redefined." Following Loving v. Virginia, The Changing Nature of Interracial Marriage in Georgia: A Research Note states "there was a 448 per cent increase in the number in interracial marriages (from 21 in 1967 to 115 in 1970)" (Aldridge, 1973). These numbers are only from the state of Georgia after the Supreme Court ruling, but the numbers and percentages only continued to increase across the United States. However, interracial couples still had to overcome many fears of possibly losing respect from friends, family, and the community in which they lived while others were still adapting to the new law change involving interracial marriage in the United States. Othello and Desdemona from William Shakespeares Othello, a play often depicted as concerning a biracial couple. ... International recognition Civil unions and domestic partnerships Recognized in some regions Unregistered co-habitation Recognition debated Civil unions legal, same-sex marriage debated See also Same-sex marriage Civil union Registered partnership Domestic partnership Timeline of same-sex marriage Listings by country This box:      Same-sex marriage, also called gay... Manifestations Slavery Racial profiling Lynching Hate speech Hate crime Genocide (examples) Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing Pogrom Race war Religious persecution Gay bashing Blood libel Paternalism Police brutality Movements Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid Redlining Internment Anti-discriminatory Emancipation Civil rights Desegregation Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action Racial... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the song by James Blunt, see 1973 (song). ...

Some activists believe that the Loving ruling will eventually aid the marriage equality movement for same-sex partnerships, if they allow the Equal Protection Clause to be used. F.C. Decoste states, "If the only arguments against same sex marriage are sectarian, then opposing the legalization of same sex marriage is invidious in a fashion no different from supporting anti miscegenation laws". These activists maintain that miscegenation laws are to interracial marriage, as sodomy laws are to homosexual rights and that Sodomy laws have been placed upon society to maintain traditional sex roles that have become part of American society. Their opponents point out, however, that there are no laws in the United States which place criminal sanction on same-sex marriages such as the ones applied to inter-racial marriage before Loving v. Virginia. Most jurisdictions do no recognize such marriages, but none treats them as criminal. Additionally, the United States Supreme Court in the case of Baker v. Nelson, decided just a few years after the Loving Decision, summarily affirmed that traditional marriage laws do not violate the Constitution of the United States. Marriage Equality is a national organization fighting for legal recognition of same-sex marriage through education and outreach in US, which was founded on February 12, 1998. ... Sectarianism is an adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination, it also usually involves a rejection of those not a member of ones sect. ... Baker v. ...

On June 12, 2007, Mildred Loving issued a rare public statement prepared for delivery on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision of the US Supreme Court, which commented on same-sex marriage. [1] The concluding paragraphs of her statement read as follows:

Numerous appellate courts have rejected any reliance upon the Loving case as controlling upon the issue of same-sex marriage. For example, the Majority Opinion of the New York Court of Appeals in Hernandez v Robles held that:

^[4]

Similarly the concurring opinion in the same case stated that:

^[5]

Movie

The story of the Lovings been turned into the film Mr. & Mrs. Loving (1996), starring Lela Rochon, Timothy Hutton, and Ruby Dee. The screenplay was written and directed by Richard Friedenberg. Lela Rochon (born April 17, 1964 in Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an African-American actress of who is best known for her role as Robin Stokes in the movie Waiting to Exhale. ... Image:Timhut. ... Ruby Dee (born October 27, 1924) is an African American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist. ...

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 388
• Loving Day
• Pace v. Alabama
• Perez v. Sharp
• McLaughlin v. Florida

This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 388 of the United States Reports: Loving v. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Holding The court affirmed the conviction of the plaintiff and declared Alabamas anti-miscegenation statute constitutional. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Holding A Florida criminal statute which prohibits an unmarried interracial couple from habitually living in and occupying the same room in the nighttime. ...

Footnotes

Further Research

This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

• Aldridge, Delores. "The Changing Nature of Interracial Marriage in Georgia: A Research Note." Journal of Marriage and the Family 35, no. 4 (November 1973): 641-42. doi:10.2307/350877.
• Annella, M. "Interracial Marriages in Washington, D.C." Journal of Negro Education 36 (Autumn 1967): 428-33. doi:10.2307/2294264.
• Barnett, Larry. "Research on International and Interracial Marriages." Marriage and Family Living 25, no. 1 (February 1963): 105-07. doi:10.2307/349019.
• Brower, Brock. "Irrepressible Intimacies." Review of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, by Randall L. Kennedy. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 40 (Summer 2003): 120-24. doi:10.2307/3134064.
• Coolidge, David Orgon. "Playing the Loving Card: Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Analogy." BYU Journal of Public Law 12 (1998): 201-38.
• DeCoste, F.C. "The Halpren Transformation: Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Society, and the Limits of Liberal Law." Alberta Law Review 41 (September 2003): 619-42.
• Foeman, Anita Kathy, and Teresa Nance. "From Miscegenation to Multiculturalism: Perceptions and Stages of Interracial Relationship Development." Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 4 (1999): 540-57.
• Hopkins, C. Quince. "Variety in U.S Kinship Practices, Substantive Due Process Analysis and the Right to Marry." BYU Journal of Public Law 18 (2004): 665-79.
• Kalmijn, Matthijs. "Intermarriage and Homogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends." Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 395-421.
• Koppelman, Andrew. "The Miscegenation Analogy: Sodomy Law as Sex Discrimination." Yale Law Journal 98 (1988): 145-64.
• Pascoe, Peggy. "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America." Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (1996): 44-69.
• Walington, Walter. Domestic Relations. November 1967.
• Wildman, Stephanie. "Interracial Intimacy and the Potential for Social Change." Review of Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance by Rachel F. Moran. Berkeley Women's Law Journal 17 (2002): 153-64. doi:10.2139/ssrn.309743.
• Yancey, George, and Sherelyn Yancey. "Interracial Dating: Evidence from Personal Advertisements." Journal of Family Issues 19, no. 3 (May 1998): 334-48. doi:10.1177/019251398019003006.

Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ...

External links

• ABC News: A Groundbreaking Interracial Marriage; Loving v. Virginia at 40. Interview with Mildred Jeter Loving & video of original 1967 broadcast. June 14, 2007.
• Loving et ux. v. Virginia (UMKC School of Law)
• Resources at Oyez including complete audio of the oral arguments.
• Loving Day: June 12—commemorating legalization of interracial couples
• Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions. National Public Radio: All Things Considered, June 11, 2007.
• 40 years of interracial marriage: Mildred Loving reflects on breaking the color barrier AP article in International Herald Tribune
• Mr. & Mrs. Loving at the Internet Movie Database