Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down every state law banning interracial marriage. On June 12, 1967, a unanimous Court held that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and it invalidated similar statutes in 15 other states the same day.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) The ruling established that marriage is a fundamental right the government cannot restrict on the basis of race.
Who the Lovings Were
Richard Loving was a white man. Mildred Jeter was a woman of Native American and African American descent. They grew up in Central Point, Virginia, and because Virginia would not let them marry, they traveled to Washington, D.C., and obtained a marriage license on June 2, 1958.2National Archives. Marriage License for Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Delores Jeter They returned home to live as husband and wife.
A few weeks later, Caroline County Sheriff Garnett Brooks and two deputies broke into the Lovings’ home in the early morning and found the couple in bed. Mildred told the officers she was Richard’s wife. The sheriff replied, “Not here you’re not.” Both were arrested.
On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court of Caroline County. Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced each to one year in jail but suspended the sentence for 25 years on one condition: they had to leave Virginia and not return together for a quarter century.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) The couple moved to Washington, D.C., and raised their children there.
The Law Behind the Prosecution
The Lovings were charged under Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The statute required every Virginian to be recorded at birth as either “white” or “colored” and defined a white person as someone “who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.”3Library of Virginia. Virginia Health Bulletin – The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity, March 1924 Any marriage between a white person and a non-white person was prohibited.
Violating the marriage ban was a felony punishable by one to five years in the state penitentiary. The law also voided out-of-state marriages if the couple returned to Virginia to live together, which closed the obvious workaround. Virginia was not alone. When the Lovings were arrested, roughly two dozen states still enforced some form of anti-miscegenation law.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The Lovings had lived in exile for nearly five years when, in 1963, Mildred wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asking for help. Kennedy referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, which assigned two young Virginia lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, to the case.
Cohen filed a motion in November 1963 asking the Caroline County Circuit Court to vacate the convictions. Judge Bazile refused. The Lovings’ lawyers appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which in March 1966 upheld the anti-miscegenation statutes but modified Bazile’s sentence, finding that banishing the couple from the state was an unreasonable condition. Cohen and Hirschkop then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on April 10, 1967.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967)
What the Supreme Court Decided
The Court ruled unanimously for the Lovings. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion, and it rested on two independent grounds under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Equal Protection
Virginia’s main defense was the “equal application” theory: because the statute punished both the white and the non-white spouse, the state argued it treated everyone equally. The Court rejected that argument. Because the law drew distinctions based solely on race, it triggered strict scrutiny, and Virginia had to show a compelling purpose independent of racial discrimination. It could not. Warren wrote that there was “patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification.” Virginia banned only interracial marriages involving white people, which the Court said showed the law was “designed to maintain White Supremacy.”4Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v Virginia
Due Process
The Court also held that the law violated due process by stripping away a fundamental liberty. Warren wrote that “the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men” and called marriage “one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.”4Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v Virginia Denying that freedom on the basis of racial classification deprived Virginians of liberty without due process of law.
The dual holding mattered. Equal protection alone would have ended race-based marriage bans. The due process ground did something broader: it recognized the right to marry itself as a constitutionally protected liberty.
Which States Were Affected
The ruling immediately invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in the 16 states that still enforced them: Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) Maryland had repealed its own ban earlier that year while the case was pending.
Why Loving Still Matters
The due process holding, that marriage is a fundamental right, became the foundation for the next major expansion of marriage rights. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage, citing Loving repeatedly and drawing on the same constitutional logic: that the right to marry is too fundamental to be denied based on characteristics the government finds objectionable. The line from 1967 to 2015 runs directly through the reasoning Warren set out for a unanimous Court.