Loving v. Virginia

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Loving v. Virginia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 10, 1967
Decided June 12, 1967
Full case name: Richard Perry Loving, Mildred Jeter Loving v. Virginia
Citations: 388 U.S. 1; 87 S. Ct. 1817; 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 1082
Prior history: Defendants convicted, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 6, 1959); motion to vacate judgment denied, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 22, 1959); affirmed in part, reversed and remanded, 147 S.E.2d 78 (Va. 1966)
Argument: Link to Oral Argument
Holding
The Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restriction on marriage in the United States.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Earl Warren
Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Abe Fortas
Case opinions
Majority by: Warren
Joined by: unanimous court
Concurrence by: Stewart
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Va. Code §§ 20-58, 20-59

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)[1], was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Contents

[edit] Facts

The plaintiffs, Mildred Loving (nee Mildred Delores Jeter, a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, 1939 – May 2, 2008)[2][3] and Richard Perry Loving (a white man, October 29, 1933 – June 1975), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and any non-white person. Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which defined "miscegenation" as a felony punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that

“ Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix. ”

The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia, and on November 6, 1963 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion on their behalf in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment. This set in motion a series of lawsuits which ultimately reached the Supreme Court. On October 28, 1964, after their motion still had not been decided, the Lovings began a class action suit in the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. On January 22, 1965, the three-judge district court decided to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Soon to be Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice, Harry L. Carrico wrote an opinion for the court upholding the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the criminal convictions.

Ignoring United States Supreme Court precedent, Carrico cited as authority the Virginia Supreme Court's own decision in Naim v. Naim (1955) and also argued that the case at hand was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause because both the white and the non-white spouse were punished equally for the "crime" of "miscegenation", an argument similar to that made by the United States Supreme Court in 1883 in Pace v. Alabama.

In 1966, the Presbyterian Church took a strong stand stating that they do not condemn or prohibit interracial marriages. The church found "no theological grounds for condemning or prohibiting marriage between consenting adults merely because of racial origin". In that same year, the Unitarian Universalist Association declared that "laws which prohibit, inhibit or hamper marriage or cohabitation between persons because of different races, religions, or national origins should be nullified or repealed." [1] Months before the Supreme Court ruling on Loving v. Virginia the Roman Catholic Church joined the movement, supporting interracial couples in their struggle for recognition of their right to marriage.

[edit] Key precedents

Prior to Loving v. Virginia there were several monumental cases. In Pace v. Alabama (1883) the Supreme Court ruled that the conviction of an Alabama couple for interracial sex, affirmed on appeal by the Alabama Supreme Court, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Interracial extramarital sex was deemed a felony, whereas extramarital sex ("adultery or fornication") was only a misdemeanor. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the criminalization of interracial sex was not a violation of the equal protection clause because whites and non-whites were punished in equal measure for the offense of engaging in interracial sex. The court did not need to affirm the constitutionality of the ban on interracial marriage that was also part of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law, since the plaintiff, Mr. Pace, had chosen not to appeal that section of the law. After Pace v. Alabama, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws banning marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged until the 1920s.

The plaintiffs, Mildred and Richard Loving
The plaintiffs, Mildred and Richard Loving

In Kirby v. Kirby (1921), Mr. Kirby asked the state of Arizona for an annulment of his marriage. He charged that his marriage was invalid because his wife was of ‘negro’ descent, thus violating the state's anti-miscegenation law. The Arizona Supreme Court judged Mrs. Kirby’s race by observing her physical characteristics and determined that she was of mixed race, thereby granting Mr. Kirby’s annulment (Pascoe 49-51).

In the Monks case (Estate of Monks, 4. Civ. 2835, Records of California Court of Appeals, Fourth district), the Superior Court of San Diego County in 1939 decided to invalidate the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Allan Monks because she was deemed to have "one eight negro blood". The court case involved a legal challenge over the conflicting wills that had been left by the late Allan Monks, an old one in favor of a friend named Ida Lee and a newer one in favor of his wife. Lee's lawyers charged that the marriage of the Monks, which had taken place in Arizona, was invalid under Arizona state law because Marie Antoinette was "a Negro" and Alan had been white. Despite conflicting testimony by various expert witnesses, the judge defined Mrs. Monks race by relying on the anatomical "expertise" of a surgeon. The judge ignored the arguments of an anthropologist and a biologist that it was impossible to tell a person's race from physical characteristics. (Pascoe, p. 56).

Monks then challenged the Arizona anti-miscegenation law itself, taking her case to the California Court of Appeals, Fourth District. Monks's lawyers pointed out that the anti-miscegenation law effectively prohibited Monks as a mixed-race person from marrying anyone: "As such, she is prohibited from marrying a negro or any descendant of a negro, a Mongolian or an Indian, a Malay or a Hindu, or any descendants of any of them. Likewise ... as a descendant of a negro she is prohibited from marrying a Caucasian or a descendant of a Caucasian...." The Arizona anti-miscegenation statute thus prohibited Monks from contracting a valid marriage in Arizona, and was therefore an unconstitutional constraint on her liberty. The court, however, dismissed this argument as inapplicable, since the case presented involved not two mixed-race spouses but a mixed-race and a white spouse: "Under the facts presented the appellant does not have the benefit of assailing the validity of the statute." (Pascoe, 60). Dismissing Monks's appeal in 1942, the United States Supreme Court refused to reopen the issue.

The turning point came with Perez v. Sharp (1948), also known as Perez v. Lippold. In Perez, the Supreme Court of California recognized that interracial bans on marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

[edit] Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:

“ 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 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 discrimination. 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. ”

The Supreme Court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy:

“ 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. ”

Despite this Supreme Court ruling, such laws rested unenforced in several states until 2000 when Alabama became the last state to remove its law against mixed-race marriage.

[edit] Future implications

See also: Interracial marriage, Same-sex marriage in the United States, and Jim Crow laws

The definition of a marriage and what constitutes a family was reconsidered by society[citation needed] after the decision of Loving v. Virginia. Following Loving v. Virginia, The Changing Nature of Interracial Marriage in Georgia: A Research Note states "there was a 448 per cent increase in the number in interracial marriages (from 21 in 1967 to 115 in 1970)" (Aldridge, 1973). These numbers are only from the state of Georgia after the Supreme Court ruling, but the numbers and percentages only continued to increase across the United States.[citation needed] However, interracial couples still had to overcome many fears of possibly losing respect from friends, family, and the community.

Some activists believe that the Loving ruling will eventually aid the marriage equality movement for same-sex partnerships, if courts allow the Equal Protection Clause to be used. F.C. Decoste states, "If the only arguments against same sex marriage are sectarian, then opposing the legalization of same sex marriage is invidious in a fashion no different from supporting anti miscegenation laws". These activists maintain that miscegenation laws are to interracial marriage, as sodomy laws are to homosexual rights and that sodomy laws were enacted in order to maintain traditional sex roles that have become part of American society. Opponents point out that the United States Supreme Court in the case of Baker v. Nelson, decided just a few years after the Loving decision, summarily affirmed that traditional marriage laws do not violate the Constitution of the United States.

On June 12, 2007, Mildred Loving issued a rare public statement prepared for delivery on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision of the US Supreme Court, which commented on same-sex marriage. [2] The concluding paragraphs of her statement read as follows:

“ Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

 ”

Numerous[citation needed] appellate courts have rejected any reliance upon the Loving case as controlling upon the issue of same-sex marriage. For example, the Majority Opinion of the New York Court of Appeals in Hernandez v. Robles held that:

“ [T]he historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. Racism has been recognized for centuries — at first by a few people, and later by many more — as a revolting moral evil. This country fought a civil war to eliminate racism's worst manifestation, slavery, and passed three constitutional amendments to eliminate that curse and its vestiges. Loving was part of the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, the triumph of a cause for which many heroes and many ordinary people had struggled since our nation began. It is true that there has been serious injustice in the treatment of homosexuals also, a wrong that has been widely recognized only in the relatively recent past, and one our Legislature tried to address when it enacted the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act four years ago (L 2002, ch 2). But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude. ”

[4]

Similarly the concurring opinion in the same case stated that:

“ Plaintiffs' reliance on Loving v. Virginia (388 US 1 [1967]) for the proposition that the US Supreme Court has established a fundamental "right to marry the spouse of one's choice" outside the male/female construct is misplaced. In Loving, an interracial couple argued that Virginia's antimiscegenation statute, which precluded "any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian" (id. at 5 n 4), violated the federal Due Process and Equal Protection clauses. The statute made intermarriage in violation of its terms a felony carrying a potential jail sentence of one to five years. The Lovings—a white man and a black woman—had married in violation of the law and been convicted, prompting them to challenge the validity of the Virginia law. The Supreme Court struck the statute on both equal protection and due process grounds, but the focus of the analysis was on the Equal Protection Clause. Noting that "[t]he clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States," the Court applied strict scrutiny review to the racial classification, finding "no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification" (id. at 10, 11). It made clear "that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the [*12]Equal Protection Clause" (id. at 12). There is no question that the Court viewed this antimiscegenation statute as an affront to the very purpose for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment—to combat invidious racial discrimination. In its brief due process analysis, the Supreme Court reiterated that marriage is a right "fundamental to our very existence and survival" (id., citing Skinner, 316 US at 541)—a clear reference to the link between marriage and procreation. It reasoned: "To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law" (id.). Although the Court characterized the right to marry as a "choice," it did not articulate the broad "right to marry the spouse of one's choice" suggested by plaintiffs here. Rather, the Court observed that "[t]he Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations" (id. [emphasis added]).[FN2] Needless to say, a statutory scheme that burdens a fundamental right by making conduct criminal based on the race of the individual who engages in it is inimical to the values embodied in the state and federal Due Process clauses. Far from recognizing a right to marry extending beyond the one woman and one man union,[FN3] it is evident from the Loving decision that the Supreme Court viewed marriage as fundamental precisely because of its relationship to human procreation. ”

[5]

[edit] Movie

The story of the Lovings has been turned into a film, Mr. & Mrs. Loving (1996), starring Lela Rochon, Timothy Hutton and Ruby Dee. The screenplay was written and directed by Richard Friedenberg. Mildred Loving has disputed the accuracy of the film.[6]

[edit] Death

Mildred Loving died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008 in Milford, Virginia[7]. Her daughter, Peggy Fortune, told the Associated Press: "I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love."

Richard Loving died in a car accident in 1975 that had also injured Mildred[7].

The final sentence in Mildred Loving's obit in The New York Times [3] makes note of the June 2007 statement noted above to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. Here is part of the Washington Post’s obituary: “A modest homemaker, Loving never thought she had done anything extraordinary. ‘It wasn't my doing,’ Loving told the Associated Press in a rare interview a year ago. ‘It was God's work.’"

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Full text of the opinion in Loving v. Virginia courtesy of Findlaw.com.
  2. ^ Loving v. Virginia and the Hegemony of "Race"
  3. ^ Pioneer of interracial marriage looks back
  4. ^ Hernandez v. Robles (2006 NY Slip Op 05239)
  5. ^ http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2006/2006_05239.htm
  6. ^ Associated Press. "40 years of interracial marriage: Mildred Loving reflects on breaking the color barrier", International Herald-Tribune, 2007-06-09. Retrieved on 2008-04-28. "'Not much of [the film] was very true,' she said on a recent Thursday afternoon. 'The only part of it right was I had three children.'" 
  7. ^ a b Patricia Sullivan. "Quiet Va. Wife Ended Interracial Marriage Ban", Washington Post, May 6, 2008. Retrieved on May 6, 2008. "Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down similar laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday [May 2; May 6, the day of publication, was a Tuesday] at her home in Milford, Va."
    "Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunk driver struck their car. Mildred Loving, who was also in the car, lost her right eye in the collision."

[edit] Further reading

  • Aldridge, Delores. "The Changing Nature of Interracial Marriage in Georgia: A Research Note." Journal of Marriage and the Family 35, no. 4 (November 1973): 641-42. doi:10.2307/350877.
  • Annella, M. "Interracial Marriages in Washington, D.C." Journal of Negro Education 36 (Autumn 1967): 428-33. doi:10.2307/2294264.
  • Barnett, Larry. "Research on International and Interracial Marriages." Marriage and Family Living 25, no. 1 (February 1963): 105-07. doi:10.2307/349019.
  • Brower, Brock. "Irrepressible Intimacies." Review of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, by Randall L. Kennedy. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 40 (Summer 2003): 120-24. doi:10.2307/3134064.
  • Coolidge, David Orgon. "Playing the Loving Card: Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Analogy." BYU Journal of Public Law 12 (1998): 201-38.
  • DeCoste, F.C. "The Halpren Transformation: Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Society, and the Limits of Liberal Law." Alberta Law Review 41 (September 2003): 619-42.
  • Foeman, Anita Kathy, and Teresa Nance. "From Miscegenation to Multiculturalism: Perceptions and Stages of Interracial Relationship Development." Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 4 (1999): 540-57.
  • Hopkins, C. Quince. "Variety in U.S Kinship Practices, Substantive Due Process Analysis and the Right to Marry." BYU Journal of Public Law 18 (2004): 665-79.
  • Kalmijn, Matthijs. "Intermarriage and Homogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends." Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 395-421.
  • Koppelman, Andrew. "The Miscegenation Analogy: Sodomy Law as Sex Discrimination." Yale Law Journal 98 (1988): 145-64.
  • Pascoe, Peggy. "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America." Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (1996): 44-69.
  • Walington, Walter. Domestic Relations. November 1967.
  • Wildman, Stephanie. "Interracial Intimacy and the Potential for Social Change." Review of Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance by Rachel F. Moran. Berkeley Women's Law Journal 17 (2002): 153-64. doi:10.2139/ssrn.309743.
  • Yancey, George, and Sherelyn Yancey. "Interracial Dating: Evidence from Personal Advertisements." Journal of Family Issues 19, no. 3 (May 1998): 334-48. doi:10.1177/019251398019003006.

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