Loving v Virginia

The Supreme Court of the mid-1950s through to the 1970s is considered by many to be the most liberal Supreme Court in U.S. History. Guided by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court took on dozens of cases that involved racism, segregation, equal protections, and minority rights. The tenure of the Warren Court, utilizing judicial activism, oversaw the expansion of civil rights, the growth of federal powers, and the increased power of the executive to enforce minority rights. One of the many landmark cases heard by the Warren Court is Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Nearly a decade after the Court desegregated the schools; this case reviewed the laws in the U.S. that forbade interracial marriage.

Loving v Virginia: 1967

The Loving v. Virginia case became a landmark decision as the Court’s ruling affected dozens of states with anti-miscegenation laws.

Fig. 1 - The title page to a pamphlet on miscegenation from 1864

Loving v Virginia: Case

The plaintiffs in the case are Mildred Loving and Richard Loving. Mildred was a woman of mixed-race descent, identifying as Rappahannock Native American, Cherokee, Portuguese, and African American. Mildred's lawyers and herself identified her as Black through most of the legal proceedings leading up to the Supreme Court decision. However, the arrest records show the police identified her as an “Indian.”

Richard Loving was a white man who, along with Mildred, was born and raised in Caroline County, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C. Though the county itself enacted strong segregation laws, the town they grew up in - Central Point - was known as an openly mixed-race community. Richard and Mildred met in high school, where their relationship began.

In 1958, Mildred became pregnant. The couple decided to travel to Washington, D.C., to be married to avoid Virginia’s anti-interracial marriage laws that made marriage between white and non-whites a criminal offense. A few weeks after they returned from Washington, on July 11, 1958, local police raided the couple’s home to catch them in the act of intercourse, which would have also been a criminal offense. Upon raiding their home, Mildred identified their marriage certificate but was informed that it was not valid in Virginia.

Loving v Virginia: Decision

The legal road to placing their case in the Supreme Court took nearly a decade.

Fig. 2 - A portrait of Chief Justice Earl Warren

The state charged Loving’s with violating the state code that classified miscegenation as a crime punishable by prison time.

In their preliminary trial in January 1959, the Loving’s pleaded guilty to living together as man and wife. Each was sentenced to one year in prison, but that sentence was suspended as long as the Loving’s left Virginia and did not return for twenty-five years. Following their conviction, the Loving’s moved to Washington, D.C., where their marriage was legal.

Though they avoided going to prison, Mildred Loving became frustrated with their family’s inability to travel together back to Virginia to see family. Along with financial difficulties making life in Washington difficult, Mildred petitioned their conviction to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who passed their case on to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU requested a review of their conviction from the Virginia Appellate courts but did not have any response for over a year. In response to the lack of action, the ACLU brought suit in the U.S. District Court, arguing their conviction violated the equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment. The District Court upheld their conviction citing a biblical interpretation of race from the 1700s.

The subsequent appeal went to the Virginia Supreme Court, which again upheld the lower Court's decision, stating that their conviction did not violate the equal protection clause because whites and non-whites were equally punished for miscegenation. The ACLU then petitioned the case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court, which accepted the review in December 1966.

The Warren Court Decision

The Supreme Court heard the arguments from the ACLU and Virginia and issued their decision on June 12, 1967. In a 9-0 unanimous decision, the Court ruled in favor of Loving’s, overturning their conviction and nullifying the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The opinion, authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren and joined by all the justices, stated that the precedent used in the lower courts, that both whites and non-whites share an equal burden, thus miscegenation, does not violate the equal protection clause was invalid. It was invalid due to the application of strict scrutiny on the law, which was created with racial bias as its purpose.

Loving V Virginia: Summary

The Loving decision in 1967 made anti-miscegenation laws unenforceable throughout the nation. However, several states retained these laws through to the 1970s. Alabama was the last state to remove anti-miscegenation language from its state constitution in the year 2000 after nearly two-thirds of voters in the state endorsed changing their constitution.

Fig. 3 - This map shows the dates of the repeal of anti-miscegenation legislation across the United States. The states in gray never passed anti-miscegenation laws. States in green repealed the laws before 1887. The conditions in yellow repealed the laws between 1948 and 1967. The states in red had their laws nullified by the Loving decision on June 12, 1967⁴

Loving v Virginia: Impact

One of the more significant lasting impacts of the Loving v. Virginia decision is its precedent for other laws that defined marriage across the United States. Most importantly, Loving is the cornerstone precedent cited in the Obergefell v. Hodges case from 2015 that established that states were required to allow same-sex marriages under similar reasoning from the Loving case from nearly fifty years prior.