Loving v. Virginia (1967): Ending Interracial Marriage Bans

Loving v. Virginia was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, issued on 12 June 1967, that struck down state laws banning marriage between people of different races. The case was brought by Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple from rural Virginia who had been convicted of a crime simply for being married. The unanimous ruling ended the last legal bans on interracial marriage in the United States and became a cornerstone of American law on the right to marry.

Background: anti-miscegenation laws

Laws against interracial marriage, often called anti-miscegenation laws, existed in the American colonies from the seventeenth century. After the Civil War many states kept or strengthened them, and they became part of the system of racial segregation in the South.

Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was one of the strictest. It required racial classification at birth and made it a crime for a white person to marry anyone who was not classified as white. A related law made it a crime for a couple to leave Virginia to marry elsewhere and then return to live in the state.

In 1948 the California Supreme Court struck down that state’s ban in Perez v. Sharp, and other Western and Northern states repealed their laws over the following years. By 1967, however, 16 states still prohibited interracial marriage. Courts in Virginia had upheld the ban as recently as 1955 in Naim v. Naim.

The Lovings’ marriage and arrest

Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was of African American and Native American descent, grew up in Central Point, a community in Caroline County, Virginia, where people of different backgrounds mixed more than in many places in the South. After Mildred became pregnant, they travelled to Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage was legal, and married on 2 June 1958.

A few weeks later, in July 1958, the county sheriff and deputies entered the couple’s home in the early hours of the morning and arrested them. Their marriage certificate, which hung on the bedroom wall, was treated as evidence against them rather than a defence.

On 6 January 1959 the Lovings pleaded guilty in the Caroline County Circuit Court. Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced each of them to one year in prison but suspended the sentence for 25 years on condition that they leave Virginia and not return together. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they raised their three children, though they missed their families and rural life.

The legal challenge

In 1963, inspired by the growing civil rights movement, Mildred Loving wrote to the US Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, asking for help. He referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Two young volunteer lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, took the case.

In November 1963 they asked Judge Bazile to set aside the convictions. He refused in January 1965, writing an opinion that claimed the separation of races reflected divine intention. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the law and the convictions in March 1966, although it sent the case back over the terms of the sentence. The Lovings then appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Virginia argued that its law was valid because it punished white and Black partners equally. The Lovings’ lawyers replied that the law existed only to maintain white supremacy, and that marriage was a basic right that the state could not deny on the grounds of race. Oral arguments were heard on 10 April 1967.

The Supreme Court’s decision

On 12 June 1967 the Court ruled 9–0 in favour of the Lovings. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion. He rejected the idea of “equal application”, stating that laws based solely on racial classifications were subject to the most rigorous scrutiny and that Virginia’s law had no legitimate purpose independent of racial discrimination.

The Court held that the ban violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also held that it violated the Due Process Clause, describing the freedom to marry as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. Warren wrote that under the Constitution the freedom to marry a person of another race resided with the individual and could not be infringed by the state.

The decision built on earlier civil rights rulings such as Brown v. Board of Education, which had rejected segregation in public schools, and McLaughlin v. Florida (1964), which had struck down a law against interracial cohabitation.

Aftermath and the Lovings’ later lives

The ruling made the bans in all 16 states unenforceable at once. Some states were slow to remove the dead laws from their books: South Carolina removed its constitutional ban in 1998 and Alabama only in 2000, both by public vote.

Richard and Mildred Loving returned to Caroline County and built a home there. They avoided publicity and did not see themselves as activists. They had brought the case, they later explained, simply because they wanted to live together in their home community. Photographs of the couple at home, taken for Life magazine by Grey Villet in 1965, later became well known and helped shape public memory of the case. In 1975 Richard was killed when a drunk driver hit their car; Mildred was injured and lost the sight in one eye. She never remarried and died in 2008.

The Lovings’ story was later told in the documentary “The Loving Story” (2011) and the feature film “Loving” (2016).

Legacy

Loving v. Virginia is one of the most frequently cited cases in American constitutional law. It is regarded as the end of the legal framework of segregation, alongside the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The case’s statement that marriage is a fundamental right later shaped debates over same-sex marriage. In 2007 Mildred Loving issued a statement supporting the right of same-sex couples to marry, and the Supreme Court relied on Loving when it recognised same-sex marriage nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. The Respect for Marriage Act of 2022 also requires recognition of marriages regardless of the couple’s race.

Social attitudes changed more slowly than the law. Gallup polls found that only a small minority of Americans approved of marriage between Black and white people in the late 1950s, while a large majority approved by the 2010s. The share of interracial or interethnic marriages among newlyweds rose from around 3 per cent in 1967 to about 17 per cent in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center.

Timeline

• 1924: Virginia passes the Racial Integrity Act.
• 1958, 2 June: Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter marry in Washington, D.C.
• 1958, July: The couple are arrested at their home in Caroline County, Virginia.
• 1959, 6 January: They plead guilty and are ordered to leave Virginia for 25 years.
• 1963: Mildred Loving writes to Robert F. Kennedy; the ACLU takes the case.
• 1966, March: The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upholds the ban.
• 1967, 10 April: Oral argument before the US Supreme Court.
• 1967, 12 June: The Court unanimously strikes down the ban.
• 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges cites Loving in recognising same-sex marriage.

Why it matters

Loving v. Virginia ended one of the oldest forms of legal racial discrimination in the United States. It confirmed that the choice of whom to marry belongs to the individual, not the state, and its reasoning continues to shape American law on equality and personal liberty.