Loving vs. Virginia
| Loving v. Virginia | |
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| Argued April 10, 1967 Decided June 12, 1967 |
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| Full case name | Richard Perry Loving, Mildred Jeter Loving v. Virginia |
| Citations | 388 U.S. 1 (more)
87 S. Ct. 1817; 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 1082
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| Argument | Oral argument |
| Prior history | Defendants convicted, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 6, 1959); motion to vacate judgment denied, Caroline County Circuit Court (January 22, 1959); affirmed in part, reversed and remanded, 147 S.E.2d 78 (Va. 1966) |
| Holding | |
| Bans on interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection Clause. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Warren, joined unanimously |
| Concurrence | Stewart |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Va. Code §§ 20–58, 20–59 | |
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This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
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| Pace v. Alabama (1883) | |
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
The case was brought by Mildred Loving (née Jeter), a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision determined that this prohibition was unconstitutional, overruling Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
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.
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