Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 Supreme Court decision that struck down every state law banning interracial marriage in the United States. The Court ruled unanimously on June 12, 1967, that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) At the time of the ruling, sixteen states still made interracial marriage a crime.
Who the Lovings Were
Mildred Jeter, a Black and Native American woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, lived in Central Point, Virginia. In June 1958, they traveled to Washington, D.C., to get married because Virginia would not issue them a license. They returned home as husband and wife.
Five weeks later, the county sheriff and two deputies entered their bedroom in the early hours of the morning, shined a flashlight in their faces, and demanded to know who the woman in bed was. Richard pointed to the marriage certificate hanging on the wall. The sheriff told him it was no good in Virginia.
A Caroline County grand jury indicted the couple. On January 6, 1959, they pleaded guilty. There was no trial.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) The judge sentenced each of them to one year in jail but suspended the sentence on one condition: they had to leave Virginia and not return together for twenty-five years.2Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) They moved to Washington, D.C., cut off from the community where their families lived.
The Virginia Laws They Were Charged Under
The Lovings were prosecuted under two provisions of the Virginia Code, both rooted in the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Section 20-58 made it a crime for a white person and a person of another race to leave the state, marry elsewhere, and return to live in Virginia. Section 20-59 classified interracial marriage as a felony punishable by one to five years in the state penitentiary.2Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) The 1924 statute required marriage-license applicants to declare their race and defined a “white person” as someone with no ancestry of any other race.3Library of Virginia. Virginia Health Bulletin: The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity, March 1924
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
After five years of exile, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963 asking for help. Kennedy referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union, which assigned two young volunteer attorneys, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the Caroline County Circuit Court to vacate the convictions, arguing the statutes violated the Fourteenth Amendment.2Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
The trial judge, Leon M. Bazile, refused to set aside the conviction and issued a written opinion stating: “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. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”4Library of Virginia. Judge Leon M. Bazile, Indictment for Felony
The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld the statutes on March 7, 1966, relying on its own 1955 decision in Naim v. Naim, which had justified the marriage restrictions as necessary to “preserve the racial integrity of its citizens” and prevent “the corruption of blood” and “the obliteration of racial pride.” The United States Supreme Court later described those justifications as “obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.”2Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Cohen and Hirschkop presented oral arguments on April 10, 1967. Richard Loving, not a man given to speeches, asked Cohen to deliver a simple message to the justices: “Tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”
What the Supreme Court Decided
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous opinion, with Justice Potter Stewart adding a brief concurrence.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) The Court held that Virginia’s statutes violated the Fourteenth Amendment on two independent grounds.
On equal protection, the Court rejected Virginia’s argument that the law applied equally because it punished both spouses. Warren wrote that the statutes existed to maintain white supremacy, and a law built on racial classification to enforce a racial hierarchy violates the Equal Protection Clause. Punishing both parties does not cure the discrimination at the core of the statute.2Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
On due process, the Court held that the freedom to marry is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. Denying that right based on racial classifications, with no purpose independent of racial discrimination, directly contradicts the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) Grounding the ruling in both clauses made the holding difficult to work around in later cases.
What Changed After the Ruling
The decision immediately invalidated the anti-miscegenation laws still in force across sixteen states. Those laws became unenforceable the day the opinion came down, whether or not state legislatures formally repealed them.
Formal repeal took longer. Alabama was the last state to remove its anti-miscegenation language, putting the question to voters in November 2000 as a ballot measure to strike Section 102 from its state constitution. The measure passed, but roughly forty percent of voters chose to keep the language banning interracial marriage, more than three decades after the Supreme Court had made it a nullity.
How Loving Shaped Later Marriage Cases
Loving established that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right, and that principle carried beyond the context of race. In United States v. Windsor (2013), the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, holding that it unconstitutionally deprived same-sex couples of the equal liberty guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.5Justia. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013)
In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage and cited Loving repeatedly. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion drew a direct line between the two cases, writing that the connection between marriage and liberty “is why Loving invalidated interracial marriage bans under the Due Process Clause.”6Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015)
In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the federal government and all states to recognize any marriage that was valid in the state where it was performed, regardless of the spouses’ sex, race, or ethnicity.7Congress.gov. H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act The statute codified the holdings of both Loving and Obergefell into federal law.