Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark (unanimous) decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) (J. Warren), in which the Court held that Virginia’s “anti-miscegenation statutes” – laws prohibiting marriages between persons solely on the basis of race – violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1958, two residents of Virginia – Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man – were married in Washington, D.C. Shortly afterwards, they returned to Virginia and settled down as man and wife. That fall, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages.
The following year, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail. The trial judge, Leon Bazile, suspended the sentence for 25 years, on the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. (Judge Bazile’s January 22, 1965 opinion, containing a laughably shameful passage in which he states that “God created [various] races” and “did not intend for the races to mix”, is here.)
Several years later (after the case wound its way through procedural channels I won’t address here) the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Lovings’ convictions.
As to the Equal Protection Clause, the Court explained:
There can be no question but that Virginia’s miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated ‘(d)istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry’ as being ‘odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.’ Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100, 63 S.Ct. 1375, 1385, 87 L.Ed. 1774 (1943). At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the ‘most rigid scrutiny,’ Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216, 65 S.Ct. 193, 194, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they ‘cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose * * * which makes the color of a person’s skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense.’ McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, 379 U.S. at 198, 85 S.Ct. at 292, (Stewart, J., joined by Douglas, J., concurring).
There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.11 We have consistently denied *12 the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
The Court also found that the statutes in question deprived the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
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.
Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 8 S.Ct. 723, 31 L.Ed. 654 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, 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 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 by the State.
Therefore, the Court ordered that the Lovings’ convictions be reversed.