Case brief summary
Laws that ban marriage between people only because of their race violate the Constitution's promise of equal treatment and fair legal process for everyone.
Facts
Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, a Black woman and white man, married in Washington D.C., then moved to Virginia, which banned interracial marriage. They were convicted and ordered to leave the state for 25 years.
Procedural history
The Lovings asked the trial court to overturn their conviction, but it refused. Virginia's highest court upheld the law, so they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Issue
Does Virginia's law banning and punishing marriages between people of different races violate the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of equal treatment under the law and fair legal process?
Holding
Yes. Virginia's anti interracial marriage laws violate both the equal treatment guarantee and the fair process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, so the Lovings' convictions were reversed.
Reasoning
The Court said laws based only on race must pass the strictest review and serve a real purpose unrelated to racism, which Virginia's law did not meet.
Opinions
Majority (Chief Justice Warren): Struck down Virginia's interracial marriage ban as violating equal treatment under the law and the right to personal liberty and fair process.
Concurrences (Justice Stewart): Agreed with the result, repeating his earlier view that a law cannot make an act criminal based solely on the race of the person doing it.