Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down every state law banning interracial marriage. Decided unanimously on June 12, 1967, the ruling held 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 Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the Court that marriage is a fundamental civil right, and that no state may restrict it based on race.
Who the Lovings Were
Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of Black and Native American descent, grew up as neighbors near Central Point in Caroline County, Virginia.2Caroline County VA. The Lovings Because Virginia law made their marriage impossible at home, they traveled to Washington, D.C., in June 1958, married there, and returned to Caroline County.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia
Five weeks later, in the early morning of July 11, 1958, the local sheriff and two deputies entered the Lovings’ bedroom while they were sleeping. Richard pointed to the D.C. marriage certificate hanging on the wall. It meant nothing under Virginia law, and both were arrested.3National Archives. Marriage License for Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Delores Jeter
In January 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty. The trial judge gave them a choice: one year in prison, or leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia They chose exile and moved to Washington, D.C.
The Law Being Enforced
The statute used against them was Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. It barred any white person from marrying anyone other than another white person, and it defined “white” as a person with no trace of non-Caucasian ancestry.4Encyclopedia Virginia. Racial Integrity Laws (1924-1930) Violation was a felony carrying one to five years in prison. The act also declared any offending marriage automatically void, and a companion provision made it illegal for couples to leave Virginia to marry and then return as husband and wife — the exact loophole the Lovings had tried to use.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
In 1963, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asking for help. He referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union.5National Endowment for the Humanities. The Loving Story ACLU attorneys Bernard Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop took the case, and on November 6, 1963, filed a motion in the original trial court to vacate the convictions on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.6Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia
Judge Leon Bazile, who had sentenced the Lovings in 1959, denied the motion. His opinion rested on religious grounds: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents,” he wrote, and “the fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”7Library of Virginia. Judge Leon M. Bazile, Indictment for Felony
The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the statutes, reasoning that because the law punished both the white and non-white spouse equally, it did not discriminate on the basis of race.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia This “equal application” defense had been the standard justification for anti-miscegenation laws for decades. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
What the Supreme Court Held
On June 12, 1967, all nine justices ruled for the Lovings. Chief Justice Warren’s opinion rejected Virginia’s arguments on two independent constitutional grounds.
Equal Protection
The Court dismissed the equal-application defense. That both spouses faced identical punishment did not make the law racially neutral, because the entire structure of the statute was built on racial categories. Warren wrote that racial classifications in criminal laws must face “the most rigid scrutiny,” and that to survive, a law must serve some purpose independent of the racial discrimination it imposes. Virginia’s statutes served no such purpose. They existed, the Court found, solely to maintain white supremacy.1Justia. Loving v. Virginia
Due Process and the Right to Marry
The opinion then grounded marriage itself in the Due Process Clause. Warren wrote that “marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival,” and that denying that freedom on the basis of racial classifications “is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”1Justia. Loving v. Virginia This second holding did work the Equal Protection analysis alone could not: it established marriage as a fundamental constitutional right, not merely a contractual arrangement that states could regulate as they pleased.
What the Ruling Changed
The decision invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in the roughly 16 states, mostly in the South, that still enforced them. Criminal charges, void-marriage declarations, and evasion statutes like Virginia’s fell together. Interracial couples in those states could marry legally, and couples who had married elsewhere could live openly at home.
For the Lovings, the ruling ended nearly a decade of exile. They returned to Caroline County. Richard’s message to the Court, delivered through his lawyers, was simple: “Tell the Court I love my wife.”
Why Loving Still Matters
The case established two principles that reach well beyond interracial marriage. Any law that classifies people by race faces the highest level of constitutional scrutiny and rarely survives it. And the freedom to marry is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, not a privilege states may withhold on their own terms.
Obergefell v. Hodges
When the Supreme Court considered whether same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, Loving was central. The 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges cited Loving repeatedly, drawing on the same interplay between Equal Protection and Due Process that Warren had used in 1967.8Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges Mildred Loving herself had endorsed marriage equality in a rare public statement on the fortieth anniversary of the ruling in June 2007, writing that “all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.”
The Respect for Marriage Act
In December 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal protections for both interracial and same-sex marriages. The law requires every state to give full faith and credit to marriages performed in other states and prohibits state officials from denying rights based on the “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin” of the spouses.9United States Congress. HR 8404 – 117th Congress (2021-2022) – Respect for Marriage Act The inclusion of “race” alongside “sex” traces directly back to the Lovings’ fight.
How Long the Old Laws Lingered
Although Loving made every state anti-miscegenation statute unenforceable in 1967, many states left the dead-letter language on their books for years. Alabama was the last to act, putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November 2000 to remove its ban on interracial marriage. The measure passed, but roughly 40 percent of voters chose to keep the old language.