ON THIS DAY

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 June 12, 1967

US ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional

Loving v. Virginia (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

Beginning in 2013, the decision was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions ruling that restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States were unconstitutional. 

The case involved Richard Loving, a white man, and his wife Mildred Loving, a woman of color. In 1959, the Lovings were convicted of violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". Caroline County circuit court judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to prison but suspended the sentence on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return. The Lovings filed a motion to vacate their convictions on the ground that the Racial Integrity Act was unconstitutional, but Bazile denied it. After unsuccessfully appealing to the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case. 

On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings' favor that overturned their convictions and struck down Virginia's Racial Integrity Act. Virginia had argued before the Court 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 therefore 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—namely, that of getting married—that was otherwise generally accepted and that citizens were free to do

The Court's decision ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

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