My third cache commemorating  landmark decisions in American legal history. Fifty two years ago Wednesday Loving v. Virginia was decided by the United States Supreme Court. In this case, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage as violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a woman of color, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored".  

Background

Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States had been in place in certain states since colonial days. Black Codes across the seven states of the lower South made intermarriage illegal. During reconstruction new Republican legislatures in six states repealed the restrictive laws however after Democrats returned to power, the restriction was re-imposed. In 1967, 16 states, mainly Southern, still had anti-miscegenation laws. In June 1958 Mildred and Richard traveled to Washington, D.C. to marry, thereby evading their native Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime. They returned to the small town of Central Point, Virginia. Based on an anonymous tip local police raided their home in the early morning hours of July 11, 1958. When officers found the Lovings sleeping in their bed, Mildred pointed out their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall. They were told the certificate was not valid in the Commonwealth. 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. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth". They were sentenced to one year in prison. The Lovings appealed their conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.

Decision

On June 12, 1967, the Court issued a unanimous decision in their favor and overturned their convictions. The Court struck down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Virginia had argued that its law was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because the punishment was the same regardless of the offender's race, and thus it "equally burdened" both whites and non-whites. The Court found that the law nonetheless violated the Equal Protection Clause because it was based solely on "distinctions drawn according to race" and outlawed conduct that was otherwise generally accepted and which citizens were free to do. Additionally the freedom to marry was a constitutionally protected fundamental liberty, and therefore the government's deprivation of it on an arbitrary basis such as race was violation of the Due Process Clause. The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the U.S. and is remembered annually on Loving Day (June 12). It has been the subject of several songs and three movies, including the 2016 film Loving. Beginning in 2013, it was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional, including in the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges.