Loving V. Virginia Summary

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Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Mildred Jeter an African American woman and Richard Loving a Caucasian man the two were childhood sweethearts who grew up in Caroline County Virginia. The Lovings were married in 1958 in District of Colombia pursuant to the law. The couple returned to Virginia to cohabitate where they were arrested in violation of the miscegenation statutes. On January 6, 1959 the Lovings plead guilty to violating the law that criminalized interracial marriage.
Anit-miscegenation was considered a felony crime against public morality. The term Miscegenation is derived from Latin words miscere which means to mix and genus which means decent (Tennessee Government, 2015). In Virginia it was a felony under the racial integrity act of 1924 for a Caucasian individual to marry anyone of another ethnic decent. This was given a mandatory 1-5 years in prison. This act violated constitutional rights under the 14th amendment and the Equal Protection Clause, prohibiting statutes from treating any class of people unequally unless there is rational justification which would deem the statute justifiable. These statutes only applied if the interracial couple involved a Caucasian, the …show more content…

They were also charged with “punishment for marriage” developed to detour interracial marriage and cohabitation in correlation to slavery. The Lovings appealed to The Supreme Court and the court overturned the decision stating the anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional and ended all race based legal restrictions on interracial marriage. This forced the remaining 16 states to change all laws pertaining to anti-miscegenation in a unanimous decision on June 12

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