Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. In a unanimous 9–0 ruling issued on June 12, 1967, the Court held that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling invalidated similar laws in fifteen other states and recognized the freedom to marry as a fundamental constitutional right that cannot be restricted on the basis of race.
Who the Lovings Were
Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of Black and Native American descent, grew up in Caroline County, Virginia. Because they could not legally marry in Virginia, they traveled to Washington, D.C., in June 1958 and were married there. They then returned home to live together as husband and wife.
Within weeks, a local sheriff and deputies entered their bedroom in the middle of the night and arrested them. The D.C. marriage certificate the Lovings had hung on their bedroom wall was used as evidence against them.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
On January 6, 1959, both Richard and Mildred pleaded guilty. The trial judge sentenced each of them to one year in jail but suspended the sentence for twenty-five years on the condition that they leave Virginia immediately and not return together during that period.2Encyclopedia Virginia. Judgment Against Richard and Mildred Loving (January 6, 1959) The trial judge, Leon M. Bazile, defended the conviction in an opinion that read in part: “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.”3Library of Virginia. Judge Leon M. Bazile, Indictment for Felony
The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C. Several years later, Mildred wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asking whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 might help them return home. Kennedy referred the letter to the American Civil Liberties Union, which assigned two young Virginia attorneys, Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, to take the case.
The Virginia Laws at Issue
Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 made it unlawful for any white person to marry anyone other than another white person, with a narrow exception for people with a small degree of American Indian ancestry.4Encyclopedia Virginia. Preservation of Racial Integrity (1924) Two related statutes gave the ban criminal force. Section 20-58 targeted couples who left the state to marry with the intention of returning, treating those marriages as if they had taken place in Virginia. Section 20-59 classified interracial marriage as a felony punishable by one to five years in the state penitentiary.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) The Lovings were prosecuted under Section 20-58.
Virginia was not alone. When the Supreme Court took up the case in 1967, sixteen states still enforced anti-miscegenation laws.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
Cohen and Hirschkop filed a motion in the original Virginia trial court to vacate the Lovings’ convictions on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. When that court declined to act, the case moved up to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which upheld the convictions and defended the state’s authority to regulate marriage on its own terms. The Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on April 10, 1967.
What the Supreme Court Held
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court, reversing the convictions and holding that Virginia’s statutory scheme violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.5Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) The decision immediately invalidated the anti-miscegenation laws still on the books in the other fifteen states.
Equal Protection
Virginia’s central defense was that its law did not discriminate because it punished the white and non-white spouse equally. The Court rejected that argument. Warren wrote that racial classifications, “especially suspect in criminal statutes,” must face “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause, and that to survive, the state had to show its law was necessary to some legitimate purpose independent of racial discrimination.5Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Virginia could not meet that standard. The Court found the statutes had no purpose other than maintaining white supremacy. The laws banned only marriages involving a white person, leaving intermarriage between members of other races unregulated, and that asymmetry gave away the design.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Due Process and the Right to Marry
The Court did not stop at equal protection. Warren described marriage as “one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival,” and held that restricting that right on “so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes” deprived Virginia’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
The opinion closed with a line that has been quoted ever since: “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.”5Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) By resting the outcome on both clauses, the Court built a dual foundation. The equal protection analysis condemned the racial classification; the due process analysis established marriage itself as a protected fundamental right.
Justice Stewart’s Concurrence
Justice Potter Stewart joined the unanimous result but wrote separately to make a narrower point: “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.” Stewart had first articulated that principle in McLaughlin v. Florida two years earlier, and his concurrence suggested the case could be resolved on that ground alone, without the broader analysis of marriage as a fundamental right.
What Loving Changed
The immediate effect was direct. Interracial couples could legally marry in every state, and the criminal statutes used to prosecute them were no longer enforceable.
The longer-running effect came from the due process side of the ruling. Recognizing marriage as a fundamental constitutional right, rather than a privilege states could condition however they wished, gave later marriage-rights litigation its foundation. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court relied directly on Loving in striking down state bans on same-sex marriage, quoting the case at length and noting that the reasons “why marriage is a fundamental right became more clear and compelling from a full awareness and understanding of the hurt that resulted from laws barring interracial unions.”6Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) The Obergefell Court also followed Loving’s method of reading equal protection and due process together rather than as separate tests.
Congress added a statutory layer in 2022 through the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the federal government and every state to recognize the validity of interracial and same-sex marriages performed in any jurisdiction where they were legal.7Congress.gov. H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act The Act passed in part as a precaution after Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, called for reconsideration of other substantive due process precedents. Thomas did not name Loving, but his concurrence targeted the broader legal framework the decision sits within, and Congress moved to codify protections that had rested on judicial precedent alone.