Loving V. Virginia - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 4/13/16, 12:17 PM
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Loving v. Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 4/13/16, 12:17 PM Loving v. Virginia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),[X 1] [X 2] is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the Supreme Court of the United States state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Argued April 10, 1967 Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between Decided June 12, 1967 people classified as "white" and people classified as Full case Richard Perry Loving, Mildred Jeter Loving v. "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision name Virginia determined that this prohibition was Citations 388 U.S. 1 unconstitutional, reversing Pace v. Alabama (1883) (https://supreme.justia.com/us/388/1/case.html) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on (more) marriage in the United States. 87 S. Ct. 1817; 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 1082 The decision was followed by an increase in Prior history Defendants convicted, Caroline County Circuit interracial marriages in the U.S., and is remembered Court (January 6, 1959); motion to vacate annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the judgment denied, Caroline County Circuit subject of two movies, as well as several songs. Court (January 22, 1959); affirmed in part, Beginning in 2013, it was cited as precedent in U.S. reversed and remanded, 147 S.E.2d 78 (Va. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same- 1966) sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional, Argument Oral argument including in the 2015 Supreme Court decision (http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960- Obergefell v. Hodges. 1969/1966/1966_395/argument/) Holding The Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the Contents "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, as a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. 1 Background Court membership Chief Justice 1.1 Plaintiffs Earl Warren 1.2 Criminal proceedings Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas 1.3 Appellate proceedings Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan, Jr. · Potter Stewart 2 Precedents Byron White · Abe Fortas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia Page 1 of 11 Loving v. Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 4/13/16, 12:17 PM Case opinions 3 Decision Majority Warren, joined by unanimous 4 Implications of the decision Concurrence Stewart 4.1 For interracial marriage Laws applied U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Va. Code §§ 20-58, 20-59 4.2 For same-sex marriage 5 In popular culture 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links 8.1 Links with the text of the court's decision 8.2 Other external links Background Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States had been in place in certain states since colonial days. Marriage to a slave was never legal. In the Reconstruction Era in 1865 the Black Codes across the seven states of the lower South made intermarriage illegal. The new Republican legislatures in six states repealed the restrictive laws. After the Democrats returned to power, the restriction was reimposed. A major concern was how to draw the line between black and white in a society in which white men and black slave women had fathered numerous children. On the one hand, a person's reputation, as black or white, was usually decisive and practical matters. On the other hand, most laws used a "one drop of blood" criteria to the effect that one black ancestor legally put a person on in the Black category.[1] In 1967, 16 states, all southern States, had such laws. [X 1][X 2]:p. 6 Plaintiffs The plaintiffs in the case were Mildred Delores Loving, née Jeter (July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008), a woman of African-American and Rappahannock Native American descent,[2][3][4] and Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975),[5] a white man. Richard Loving died aged 41 in 1975, when a drunk driver struck his car in Caroline County, Virginia.[6] Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the same accident. She died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008, in Milford, Virginia, aged 68.[7] The couple had three children: Donald, Peggy, and Sidney. Criminal proceedings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia Page 2 of 11 Loving v. Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 4/13/16, 12:17 PM At the age of 18, Mildred became pregnant, and in June 1958 the couple traveled to Washington, D.C. to marry, thereby evading Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non- whites a crime.[8] They returned to the small town of Central Point, Virginia. Based on an anonymous tip,[9] local police raided their home at night, hoping to find them having sex, which was also a crime according to Virginia law. When the officers found the Lovings sleeping in their bed, Mildred pointed out their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall. Mildred and Richard Loving in 1967 That certificate became the evidence for the criminal charge of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth" that was brought against them. The Lovings 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 classified miscegenation as a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. The trial judge in the case, Leon M. Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, wrote: 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.[10] 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. They did so, moving to the District of Columbia. Appellate proceedings In 1964, frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia and social isolation and financial difficulties in Washington, Mildred Loving wrote in protest to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.[11] Kennedy referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[9] The ACLU filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings in the Virginia trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment. On October 28, 1964, while waiting for a response from the court to their motion, they brought a class action suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. On January 22, 1965, a three-judge district court panel decided to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Virginia Supreme Court Justice Harry L. Carrico (later Chief Justice of the Court) wrote an opinion for the court upholding the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the Lovings' sentence, affirmed their criminal convictions.[12] Carrico cited as authority the Virginia Supreme Court's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia Page 3 of 11 Loving v. Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 4/13/16, 12:17 PM decision in Naim v. Naim (1955) and argued that the Lovings' case was not a violation of the 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.[13] The Lovings, supported by the ACLU, appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. They did not attend the oral arguments in Washington, but their lawyer, Bernard S. Cohen, conveyed the message he had been given by Richard Loving to the court: "Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia."[14] Precedents Before Loving v. Virginia, there had been several cases on the subject of interracial sexual relations. 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 marital 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 U.S States, by the date of repeal of measure for the offense of engaging in interracial sex. The court did not anti-miscegenation laws: need to affirm the constitutionality of the ban on interracial marriage that No laws passed was also part of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law, since the plaintiff, 1780 to 1887 Mr. Pace, had chosen not to appeal that section of the law. After Pace v. Alabama, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws banning 1948 to 1967 marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged After 1967 until the 1920s. In Kirby v. Kirby (1921), Mr. Kirby asked the state of Arizona for an annulment of his marriage.