Interracial marriage became legal in California on October 1, 1948, when the California Supreme Court decided Perez v. Sharp and struck down the state’s ban on marriages between white people and several racial groups. The ruling made California the first state in the country to invalidate an anti-miscegenation law, arriving nearly nineteen years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same conclusion nationally in Loving v. Virginia.1Justia. Perez v. Sharp
What California Law Said Before 1948
California’s first legislature passed a law in 1850 prohibiting marriages between white people and “negroes or mulattoes,” with criminal penalties attached.2California Supreme Court Historical Society. Overturning California’s Ban on Interracial Marriages In 1872, the criminal penalties were dropped, but the prohibition itself moved into the Civil Code. Section 60 declared such marriages illegal and void. Section 69 barred county clerks from issuing licenses for them.
Over the following decades, the list of races covered by the ban expanded. In 1880 and again in 1905, the legislature amended Sections 60 and 69 to add “Mongolians,” a term then used for people of Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asian descent. In 1933, after a court ruled that Filipinos did not fall within that category, legislators added “Malays” to the statute.2California Supreme Court Historical Society. Overturning California’s Ban on Interracial Marriages By 1948, the ban covered marriages between white people and Black, East Asian, or Filipino Californians.
How Perez v. Sharp Ended the Ban
Andrea Perez, a white woman, and Sylvester Davis, a Black man, applied for a marriage license in Los Angeles County. The county clerk refused, citing Civil Code Sections 60 and 69. Perez and Davis went directly to the California Supreme Court, asking it to order the clerk to issue the license.1Justia. Perez v. Sharp
The court ruled 4-3 in their favor on October 1, 1948. Justice Roger Traynor, writing for the majority, held that marriage is “a fundamental right of free men” and that the state could not restrict it without an important social objective pursued through reasonable means. Sections 60 and 69 failed on two grounds. They were too vague to enforce as regulations of a fundamental right, and they violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment by restricting the right to marry based solely on race.1Justia. Perez v. Sharp
The three dissenting justices argued that the legislature, not the courts, should decide the question. Their view lost by a single vote. From the date of the decision, county clerks in California could no longer refuse a marriage license on racial grounds, and the two Civil Code sections were dead letters.
California Was Alone for Nineteen Years
No state court in the country had ever struck down an anti-miscegenation law before Perez. California’s ruling stood alone until the U.S. Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia on June 12, 1967. At that point, sixteen states still banned interracial marriage.3Justia. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a Black and Native American woman, had married in Washington, D.C. in 1958 and returned to their home in Virginia, where their marriage was a criminal offense. They were convicted and given a suspended sentence on the condition that they leave the state for 25 years. The Supreme Court unanimously held that Virginia’s scheme violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.4Library of Congress. Loving v. Virginia The reasoning echoed what Justice Traynor had written nineteen years earlier: marriage is a fundamental freedom, and racial classifications restricting it cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.
Loving did not change anything about California law, which had been settled since 1948. What it did was invalidate every remaining state ban in one stroke, on reasoning California’s court had reached first.
Federal Statutory Protection Today
For decades after Loving, federal law said nothing explicit about protecting interracial marriages. The constitutional ruling was clear, but no statute backed it up. In December 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which for the first time created a federal statutory guarantee that states must recognize valid marriages regardless of the race, ethnicity, or national origin of the spouses.5U.S. Congress. H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act
The statute codifies what the Constitution already requires. It also adds a layer of protection that would take an affirmative act of Congress to undo. Under the Act, no state official may deny full faith and credit to a marriage from another state based on the race or ethnicity of the couple.5U.S. Congress. H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act For a couple marrying in California today, the right rests on three foundations: the 1948 state ruling in Perez, the 1967 federal ruling in Loving, and the 2022 federal statute.