Significance: This ruling determined that it was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment for states to make laws forbidding interracial marriages. This decision continued the work of Supreme Court to eliminate legal racial discrimination.
Background: Virginia was one of 16 states which had a law prohibiting interracial marriages in which one of the marriage partners was white. In 1958 two Virginians—Mildred Jeter, an African American woman, and Richard Loving, a white man—married in the District of Columbia. After they returned to Virginia, they were arrested and convicted for violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages.
Decision: This case was argued on April 10, 1967, and decided on June 12, 1967, by a vote of 9 to 0. Chief Justice Earl Warren spoke for the unanimous Court, with Justice Potter Stewart concurring. The Court ruled in favor of the Lovings, saying that the Virginia law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it prohibited only those interracial marriages that involved a white person. In addition, the Court judged that the Virginia law violated the due process clause. By denying Loving and Jeter the right to marry, solely because Loving was white, the Virginia law violated the liberty of citizens without due process of law.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. . . . To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as . . . racial classifications . . . is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious [detestable] racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed [violated] by the State.”
