Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 Supreme Court decision that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. In a unanimous ruling, the Court held that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival,” and the decision immediately voided similar bans in fifteen other states.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Who the Lovings Were
Richard Loving was white. Mildred Jeter was of Native American and African American descent. Because Virginia law prohibited their marriage, they traveled to Washington, D.C., in June 1958 to wed, then returned to their home in Caroline County, Virginia. A grand jury indicted them for violating the state’s ban on interracial marriage. Law enforcement had entered their bedroom in the middle of the night, and the couple’s D.C. marriage certificate, hanging on the wall, was used as evidence against them.
On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail. The trial judge suspended the sentence for twenty-five years on one condition: they had to leave Virginia and not return together for a quarter century.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) They moved to Washington, D.C., separated from their extended families and community for years.
The Virginia Laws at Issue
The statutes used against the Lovings grew out of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which required racial designations on birth certificates and defined a “white person” as someone with “no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian.” Anyone outside that definition was classified as “colored.”2National Park Service. The Racial Integrity Act, 1924: An Attack on Indigenous Identity
Two provisions carried the criminal enforcement. Virginia Code § 20-58 was an anti-evasion measure: if a white person and a “colored person” left Virginia to marry elsewhere and then returned to live in the state, they faced the same punishment as if they had married inside Virginia. Cohabitation as a married couple counted as proof of the marriage. Section 20-59 set the penalty at one to five years in the state penitentiary.3Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) – Full Text The statutes applied regardless of which spouse was white, a symmetry Virginia later used to argue that the laws were evenhanded.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
Mildred Loving wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963 asking for help. He referred the couple to the American Civil Liberties Union, which assigned Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop to represent them.
On November 6, 1963, the Lovings filed a motion in the original trial court to vacate the conviction. Judge Leon Bazile denied it on January 22, 1965, reaffirming the conviction. The Lovings appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, where Justice Harry L. Carrico upheld the anti-miscegenation statutes while modifying the sentence.4Library of Virginia. Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1958-1966) The U.S. Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966, heard oral arguments on April 10, 1967, and issued its decision on June 12, 1967.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) Nearly nine years had passed since the arrest.
What the Court Held
All nine justices ruled for the Lovings.5Supreme Court Historical Society. Loving v. Virginia (1967) Chief Justice Warren’s opinion rested on two independent constitutional grounds, either of which alone would have struck the laws down.
Equal Protection
Virginia argued that its laws did not discriminate because they punished both spouses equally. The Court rejected that reasoning. Warren wrote that racial classifications in criminal statutes must survive “the most rigid scrutiny” and can be upheld only if they serve some purpose independent of racial discrimination. Virginia’s laws served no such purpose. Their design rested on keeping the races separate, which the Court called “invidious racial discrimination.” As the opinion put it, “There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification.”3Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) – Full Text
Due Process
The opinion also established that the freedom to marry is a fundamental liberty protected by the Due Process Clause. “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,” Warren wrote. “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.”1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) Denying that freedom on the basis of racial categories deprived the Lovings of liberty without due process.
Justice Potter Stewart filed a brief concurrence, writing 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,” echoing a principle he had stated two years earlier in McLaughlin v. Florida.
Which State Laws Fell
Virginia was one of sixteen states that still banned and punished interracial marriage in 1967. The others were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.6GovInfo. H. Res. 431 – Loving Day Resolution The decision invalidated every one of those laws. Some states left the dead statutory or constitutional language on the books for decades. Alabama was the last to formally remove its ban, doing so through a November 2000 ballot measure.
Why the Case Still Matters
The recognition of marriage as a fundamental right became the backbone for later challenges to marriage restrictions beyond the racial context. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which struck down state bans on same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court relied heavily on Loving, citing it repeatedly. The Obergefell majority read Loving not as creating a narrow “right to interracial marriage” but as affirming the right to marry in its comprehensive sense, then asking whether excluding a particular group from that right had sufficient justification.
Congress added a statutory layer in 2022 with the Respect for Marriage Act. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1738C, no state may deny full faith and credit to a marriage from another state based on the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of the spouses. The law also allows both the Attorney General and private individuals to bring civil actions to enforce it.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 28 – 1738C Certain Acts, Records, and Proceedings and the Effect Thereof If the Supreme Court ever reversed course, the statutory protection would remain.