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YOU HAVE NO RIGHT: LAW AND JUSTICE - ROAD TO LOVING V. VIRGINIA

Law & Justice

Road to Loving v. Virginia

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  1. Maryland enacts the first anti-miscegenation law in 1661.
  2. In 1780, Pennsylvania becomes the first state to lift its ban on interracial marriage.
  3. The Supreme Court upholds anti-miscegenation laws with its decision in Pace v. Alabama in 1883. Justice Field asserts that the laws do not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because "the punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same." (http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/106/106.US.583.html)
  4. In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly passes the Racial Integrity Act, which states, "It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian."
  5. In 1948, the California Supreme Court becomes the first state high court to overturn laws banning interracial marriage. Justice Traynor writes the decision in Perez v. Sharp.

    Marriage is something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men. There can be no prohibition of marriage except for an important social objective and by reasonable means. . . . Legislation infringing such rights must be based upon more than prejudice and must be free from discrimination to comply with the constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection of the laws. (http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16628726707857061522&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)

  6. The Supreme Court of Virginia again upholds Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws in Naim v. Naim (1955). Justice Buchanan writes the opinion.

    We are unable to read in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, or in any other provision of that great document, any words or any intendment which prohibit the State from enacting legislation to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens, or which denies the power of the State to regulate the marriage relation so that it shall not have a mongrel breed of citizens. (http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9400887882898252923&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)

  7. The Supreme Court holds bans on interracial marriage to be unconstitutional with its decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Justice Warren writes the majority opinion.

    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. . . . To deny this fundamental freedom . . . is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. At the time, sixteen states still have anti-miscegenation laws on the books.

  8. In 2000, Alabama becomes the last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation laws. There are ten states—Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin—that never had bans on interracial marriage.