1967: Loving v. Virginia
It takes the US Supreme Court another 19 years to reach the same conclusion – that interracial couples have a right to marry – in one of the landmark cases for the freedom to marry, the wonderfully-named Loving v. Virginia.
In defending the ban on interracial marriages, the State Of Virginia argues that what the framers of the
US Constitution’s
Equal Protection Clause meant was,
“only that state penal laws containing an interracial element… must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race.”
In other words, since both whites and blacks are prohibited from marrying each other, everyone’s equal.
One of the vital personal rights
The Loving court rejects the State's argument and makes two distinct findings:
I. [R]estricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
II. These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness
updated 17 Aug 2008