B2017 | Persons and Family Relations | Prof.

Aguiling-Pangalangan | 1

Loving v. Virginia
Richard Perry Loving, et.ux., appellants v. The State of Virginia, defendant

Doctrine: The freedom to marry resides within the individual and any statute or law limiting this freedom based on racial
classification alone is in violation of the 14th Amendment of the US
Constitution.
Nature: Appeal from the decision of Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
Date: 1967
Ponente: Chief Justice Warren

Facts:
Richard Loving (a caucasian male) and Mildred Jeter (a Negro woman) left their home state of Virginia and went
to the District of Columbia to get married. Shortly after their marriage they returned to Virginia and settled in Caroline
County.
October, 1958 the grand jury charged Loving and Jeter of violating Virginias ban on interracial marriages. After
they pled guilty to said charges they were both sentenced to one year in jail but a judge suspended their sentence for
25 years on the condition that both prevent themselves to returning to Virginia together for the same amount of
years.
The Lovings left but continued to pursue the cases and all the courts up to the Supreme Court of Appeals of
Virginia affirmed the decisions. The Courts argued that the Tenth Amendment left marriage

Issue: Do the anti-miscegenation laws of Virginia violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment?

Held:
Yes.

Ratio:
Virginia US Supreme Court
The Courts argued that the Tenth Amendment left marriage The state must regulate marriage within the limits set upon
to the regulation of the state without any federal intervention. them by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The state argued that under the Fourteenth Amendments The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth
Equal Protection Clause, in order to be valid equal Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of
punishment must be meted out to the colored and white invidious racial discrimination in the States.
offenders alike.

The state argued that the framers of the Fourteenth The Supreme Court rejected this notion. The mere fact that a
Amendment never intended to discredit or disallow state penal statute was equally applied does not remove the racial
miscegenation laws. classification aspect of said statute.

Chief Justice Warren:

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 by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.To deny this
fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes,
classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to
deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the
freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to
marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.

-digest by Ms. Mora