McLaughlin v. Florida
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| McLaughlin v. Florida | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||||||||
| Argued October 13 – 14, 1964 Decided December 7, 1964 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| Holding | |||||||||||||||
| Florida statute prohibits an unmarried interracial couple from habitually living in and occupying the same room in the nighttime. The same conduct when engaged in by members of the same race, is not prohibited. This is in violation of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and is, therefore, unconstitutional. | |||||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Arthur Joseph Goldberg |
|||||||||||||||
| Case opinions | |||||||||||||||
| Majority by: White Joined by: Warren, Black, Clark, Brennan, Goldberg Concurrence by: Harlan Concurrence by: Stewart Joined by: Douglas |
|||||||||||||||
| Laws applied | |||||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |||||||||||||||
McLaughlin v Florida 379 U.S. 184 (1964)[1], was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that a cohabitation law of Florida was unconstitutional. The law prohibited habitual cohabitation by two people of opposite sex, if one is black, and the other, white.
[edit] Facts
Section 798.05 of Florida statutes read: Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars.
This law was a part of the Adultery and Fornications laws of Florida, which were penalized by Chapter 798. While all the other sections of this chapter required proof that sexual intercourse took place, sec 798.05 required only cohabitation. Moreover, the law specifically prohibits a couple in which one is white and the other is black. It did not apply where one was black, and the other, say, of Native American descent.
[edit] Result
The Supreme Court held that the law, because it made a special case for couples of these two specific races, bore "heavier burden of justification." Florida had not demonstrated any reason that made such race-specific prohibition necessary. So, the law was held unconstitutional.
That a general evil will be partially corrected may at times, and without more, serve to justify the limited application of a criminal law; but legislative discretion to employ the piecemeal approach stops short of permitting a State to narrow statutory coverage to focus on a racial group.
The Court, however, decided not to look at the Anti-miscegenation laws of Florida (Fl. St. Ann. 741.11), though the state had claimed that Sec 798.05 was ancillary to them. Those laws were later declared unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia.
Justice Harlan, in his concurrence, emphasized the "heavier burden" requirement of Justice White, by stating that the law should pass a "necessity test," which is very stringent, and is applied to free speech cases.
Justices Stewart and Douglas refused to accept that there could be any such "overriding statutory purpose," which would require such discrimination based on skin color. Stewart wrote "We deal here with a criminal law which imposes criminal punishment. And I think it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor. Discrimination of that kind is invidious per se."
