Loving v. Virginia

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Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which held that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .[1] [2]

The case involved Richard Loving , a white man, and his wife Mildred Loving , a woman of color .[a] In 1959, the Lovings were convicted of violating Virginia 's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 , which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored ". Caroline County circuit court judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced the Lovings to prison but suspended their sentences on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return. The Lovings filed a motion to vacate their convictions on the ground that the Racial Integrity Act was unconstitutional, but Bazile denied it. After unsuccessfully appealing to the Supreme Court of Virginia , the Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.

In June 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings' favor that overturned their convictions and struck down Virginia's Racial Integrity Act as unconstitutional. Virginia had argued before the Court that its law was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because the punishment was the same regardless of the offender's race, and therefore it "equally burdened" both whites and non-whites.[3] The Court found that the law nonetheless violated the Equal Protection Clause because it was based solely on "distinctions drawn according to race" and outlawed conduct—namely, that of getting married—that was otherwise generally accepted and that citizens were free to do.[3] The Court's decision ended all race -based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States .

Beginning in 2013, the decision was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions ruling that restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States were unconstitutional, including in the Supreme Court decision _Obergefell v. Hodges _ (2015).[4]

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States

  • 1.2 Plaintiffs

• 2 Criminal proceedings

  • 2.1 Appellate proceedings

• 3 Precedents

• 4 Supreme Court decision

• 5 Effects

  • 5.1 For interracial marriage

  • 5.2 For same-sex marriage

• 6 Codification

• 7 In popular culture

• 8 References

  • 8.1 Footnotes

  • 8.2 Citations

  • 8.3 Bibliography

  • 8.4 Further reading

• 9 External links

  • 9.1 Links with the text of the court's decision

  • 9.2 Other external links

Background

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Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States

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Anti-miscegenation laws had been in place in certain states since the colonial period . During the Reconstruction era in 1865, the Black Codes across the seven states of the lower South made interracial marriage illegal. The new Republican legislatures in six states repealed the restrictive laws. By 1894, when the Democratic Party in the South returned to power, restrictions were reimposed.[5]

A major concern was how to draw the line between black and white in a society in which white men had many children with enslaved black women. On the one hand, a person's reputation as black or white was usually what mattered in practice. On the other hand, most laws used a "one drop of blood " rule, which meant that one black ancestor made a person black in the view of the law.[6] In 1967, 16 states still retained anti-miscegenation laws, mainly in the American South .[7]

Plaintiffs

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Loving_v._Virginia&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Plaintiffs")

Main article: Mildred and Richard Loving

Mildred Delores Loving was the daughter of Musial (Byrd) Jeter and Theoliver Jeter.[8] She self-identified as Indian -Rappahannock ,[9] but was also reported as being of Cherokee , Portuguese , and black American ancestry.[10] [11] During the trial, it seemed clear that she identified herself as Black, and her lawyer claimed that was how she described herself to him. However, upon her arrest, the police report identified her as "Indian" and by 2004, she denied having any Black ancestry.[12]

Richard Perry Loving was a white man, the son of Lola (Allen) Loving and Twillie Loving. Their families both lived in Caroline County, Virginia , which adhered to strict Jim Crow segregation laws , but their town of Central Point had been a visible mixed-race community since the 19th century.[13] Mildred became pregnant, and in June 1958, the couple traveled to Washington, D.C. in order to marry.[14] A few weeks after they returned to Central Point, local police raided their home in the early morning hours of July 11, 1958, hoping to find them having sex, as interracial sex was also illegal in Virginia.[15] When the officers found the Lovings sleeping in their bed, Mildred pointed out their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall. They were told the certificate was not valid in Virginia.[16]

Criminal proceedings

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Loving_v._Virginia&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Criminal proceedings")

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