LOVING V. VIRGINIA 333 U.S. 1 (1967)



FACTS: Loving (D), a white man, and Jeter (D), a black woman, were married in the District of Columbia, although they lived in Virginia A Virginia statute barred interracial marriage, making it a felony for any white person to intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person to intermarry with a white person The Ds were indicted, and the trial court sentenced them to 25 years in jail, but suspended the sentence on the condition that they left the state The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld the statute's constitutionality, holding that it served legitimate state purposes of preserving the racial integrity of its citizens and preventing corruption of blood, the creation of a mongrel breed of citizens, and the obliteration of racial pride Virginia (P) claimed that all races were treated the same under the statute, so there was no discrimination

ISSUE: Does a state statutory scheme preventing marriage between persons solely on the basis of their racial classification violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment? Is the right to marry a fundamental liberty protected by Due Process?

HOLDING: The United States Supreme Court, Mr. Chief Justice Warren, held that miscegenation statutes adopted by Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on basis of racial classification violate equal protection and due process clauses of Fourteenth Amendment.
Convictions reversed.

RULE OF LAW: A state law adopted to restrict the freedom to marry solely because of racial classification violates the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause The right to marry is a fundamental liberty protected by Due Process Classifications of citizens solely on the basis of race "are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality " Equal application of laws based on racial classifications does not pass strict scrutiny under equal protection

Analysis: While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State's police power, it does not contend that its powers to regulate marriage are unlimited notwithstanding the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment It contends that state penal laws containing an interracial element as part of the definition of the offense must apply equally to Whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Because the statutes punish equally both the White and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race The second argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of constitutionality is whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages The argument here is that because the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt the Court should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages.