Loving v. Virginia , 388 A.S. 1 (1967) is an important civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court, which invalidates the law prohibiting racial weddings.
The case was brought by Mildred Loving (nÃÆ' Â © eÃ, Jeter), a colored woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who has been sentenced to one year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-statute law, the Race Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people who were classified as "whites" and that people were classified as "colored". The unanimous decision of the Supreme Court stipulates that this prohibition is unconstitutional, putting aside Pace v. Alabama (1883) and put an end to all racially-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the US, and is remembered annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the subject of several songs and three movies, including the 2016 Loving movie. Beginning in 2013, it is named as a precedent in US federal court decisions that hold unconstitutional marriage restrictions in the United States unconstitutional, including in a Supreme Court decision 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges .
Video Loving v. Virginia
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Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States
Anti-marriage laws in the United States have existed in certain countries since the colonial era. Marrying slaves is never valid. In the Reconstruction Era in 1865, Black Codes in the seven southern states under made marriages illegal. The new Republican legislature in six countries revoked restrictive legislation. After the Democrats came back to power, the restrictions were reinstated.
The main concern is how to draw the line between black and white in a society where white people have many children with black female slaves. On the one hand, one's reputation as black or white usually determines in practical matters. On the other hand, most laws use the "one drop of blood" rule, which means that one black ancestor makes a person black in the eyes of the law.
In 1967, 16 states, especially the South, still had anti-marriage laws.
Plaintiff
Mildred Delores Loving (nÃÆ' Â © e Jeter; 22 July 1939 - May 2, 2008) is the daughter of Musial (Byrd) Jeter and Theoliver Jeter. Mildred's racial identity has become a point of confusion. He has been noted as identifying himself as Indian-Rappahannock, but also reportedly of Cherokee, Portuguese, and African American descent. During the trial, it was clear that he identified himself as a black man, especially as far as his own lawyers were concerned. However, after his arrest, police reports identified him as "Indian." He said in a 2004 interview, "I do not have blacks, I am Indian-Rappahannock." The possible contributing factor is that it was seen at the time of his arrest beneficial to be "anything but black." There is an ingrained history in the African state of rejection. In addition, the racial mixing of Central Point, where he lives, can contribute to the idea of ​​the racial identity of this fluid. Mildred is known as a quiet and humble woman. She was born and raised in the same rural Virginia community as her husband, Richard.
Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 - June 29, 1975) was a white man, and Lola's son (Allen) Loving and Twillie Loving. He is a construction worker. The 1830 census marks Lewis Loving, the ancestor of Richard's father, for having had seven slaves. Grandfather Richard, T.P. Farmers, fighting for Confederation in Civil War.
Their families both live in Caroline County, Virginia. This region obeys Jim Crow's strict segregation law but Central Point has been a mixed race community seen since the 19th century. Richard's father worked for one of the richest black men in the area for 25 years. Richard's closest friends were black, including those who had been sidled up and older Mildred brothers. The couple met in high school and fell in love. Richard moved to Jeter's house when Mildred became pregnant.
After the Supreme Court case, the couple moved back to Central Point, where Richard built a house for them. The couple has three children: Donald, Peggy, and Sidney. Richard Loving died at the age of 41 in 1975, when a drunk driver hit his car in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the same accident. He died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008, at his home in Central Point, 68 years old.
Maps Loving v. Virginia
Criminal process
At the age of 18, Mildred was pregnant. In June 1958, the couple went to Washington, D.C. to marry, thereby avoiding the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites to crime. They returned to the small town of Central Point, Virginia. Under the anonymous tip, local police raided their homes in the early hours of the morning of July 11, 1958, hoping to find them having sex, remembering that interracial sex was later also illegal in Virginia. When the officers find Love sleeping in their bed, Mildred shows their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall. They were told that the certificate did not apply to the Commonwealth.
The Lovings are charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibits interracial couples from marrying out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Sections 20-59, classified as criminal offspring, are punished by imprisonment between one and five year.
On January 6, 1959, Lovings pleaded guilty to "cohabiting kebo as husband and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth." They were sentenced to one year in prison, with a suspended sentence on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years. After their conviction, the couple moved to the District of Columbia.
Appeal
In 1964, frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia, as well as their social isolation and financial difficulties in Washington, Mildred Loving wrote in protest to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy referred him to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU commissioned a lawyer who worked with volunteers Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, who filed a motion on behalf of Lovings at the Virginia Circuit Court of Caroline County, which asked the court to vacate the criminal verdict and set aside the words of Love on the grounds that the Virginia static miscegenation contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Protection of Agreement.
On October 28, 1964, after waiting for almost a year to respond to their motion, ACLU lawyers brought a class action lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. This prompted a district court judge in this case, Leon M. Bazile, to issue a decision on a long-delayed movement to be vacated. Echoing the 18th-century racial interpretation of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the local court wrote:
God Almighty created the white, black, yellow, red and red races, and he placed them on a separate continent. And yet for the disturbance with its arrangement there would be no reason for such a marriage. The fact that he separates the races shows that he does not intend to race.
On January 22, 1965, a district court panel of three district judges adjourned the decision on a federal class action suit while Lovings appealed Judge Bazile's decision on a constitutional basis to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Judge Harry L. Carrico (later Court Judge) wrote an opinion to a court that upheld the constitutionality of anti-mis-classification laws. While he upheld their criminal convictions, he directed that their punishment be changed. Carrico is quoted as the decision authority of the Supreme Court of Virginia at Naim v. Naim (1955) and argued that the Lovings case was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because both white and non-white couples were punished equally for miscegenation crimes, an argument similar to that made by the United States Supreme Court in 1883 at Pace v. Alabama .
The Lovings, still supported by the ACLU, appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, where Virginia was represented by Robert McIlwaine of the state attorney general's office. The Lovings did not attend oral arguments in Washington, but one of their lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen, delivered a message that Richard Loving had given: "Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it's just not fair that I do not can stay with him in Virginia. "
Precedent
Before Loving v. Virginia , there are several cases of intercourse. In the state of Virginia, on 3 October 1878, at Kinney v. The Commonwealth, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that marriage was legalized in Washington, DC between Andrew Kinney, a black man, and Mahala Miller, a white woman, "illegitimate" in Virginia. In the national case Pace v. Alabama (1883), the United States Supreme Court ruled that Alabama couples' confidence for interracial sex, confirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court of Alabama, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Intermarrious sex marriage is considered a crime, while extramarital sex ("adultery or fornication") is only a minor crime. At the time of the appeal, the United States Supreme Court ruled that criminalizing interracial sex was not a violation of the same protection clause since white and non-whites were punished with equal measures for violations of engaging in interracial sex. The court need not affirm the constitutionality of the interracial marriage ban which is also part of Alabama's anti-marriage law, because the plaintiff, Mr. Pace, has chosen not to appeal to that section of the law. After Pace v. Alabama , the constitutionality of anti-marriage laws prohibiting marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged until the 1920s.
In Kirby v. Kirby (1921), Mr. Kirby called on the state of Arizona to cancel his marriage. He alleged that his marriage was invalid because his wife was of "negro" descent, thus violating the country's anti-marriage laws. Arizona Supreme Court judges the race Ny. Kirby by observing her physical characteristics and deciding that she was a mixed race, therefore gave Mr. Kirby a cancellation.
In the case of the Prieure ( Estate of Monks , 4. Civ. 2835, Records of California Court of Appeals, Fourth District), San Diego County High Court in 1939 decided to cancel marriage of Marie Antoinette and Allan Monks because she is considered to have "one eighth blood negro". The court case involves the legal challenge of conflicting will abandoned by the late Allan Monks; who long supported a friend named Ida Lee, and a newer one who supported his wife. Lee's lawyers allege that Monkses' marriage, which took place in Arizona, is inconsistent with the laws of the state of Arizona because Marie Antoinette is "a Negro" and Alan is white. Despite contradictory testimony by various expert witnesses, the judge defines Ny's race. Monks by relying on the anatomical expertise of a surgeon. The judge ignores the argument of an anthropologist and a biologist that it is impossible to tell one's race of physical characteristics.
Monks then challenged Arizona's anti-miscegenation law itself, taking his case to California's Court of Appeals, the Fourth District. The monk's lawyers point out that the anti-marriage law effectively prohibits monks as a mixed race from marrying someone: "Therefore, he is forbidden to marry a negro or negro, Mongol or Indian, a Malay or a Hindu, or any descendant of them... Likewise... as a negro descendant he is forbidden to marry a Caucasian or Caucasian descendant... "The Arizona anti-miscegenation statements prohibit Monks from contracting a legal marriage in Arizona, and therefore an unconstitutional constraint on his freedom. However, the court rejected this argument as unworkable, as the case presented did not involve two mixed couples but a mixed race and a white couple: "Based on the facts presented, the applicant has no benefit of violating the validity of the law." Ignoring the monk's request in 1942, United States Supreme Court refuses to reopen the matter.
The turning point comes with Perez v. Sharp (1948), also known as Perez v. Lippold . At Perez , the California Supreme Court acknowledged that the ban on intermarriage marriages violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.
Decision
The US Supreme Court overruled Lovings's conviction in a unanimous decision dated June 12, 1967, rejected Virginia Commonwealth's argument that the law forbids white people and blacks to marry people of other races and gives the same punishment to white and black offenders can not be interpreted as racial discrimination. The Court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law violated the Due Process Clause and Protection Clause that are Equivalent to the Fourteenth Amendment.
Opinion of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren for the court unanimously declared that:
Marriage is one of "basic human civil rights," which underlies our existence and survival.... Denying this fundamental freedom on an irreversible basis as the racial classification embodied in this law, the so direct subversive classification of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is sure to eliminate all citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that freedom of choice to marry is not limited by rancorous racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, someone from another race lives with the individual and can not be violated by the State.
The Court concluded that the anti-racially intentional law and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy:
Clearly there is no independent, independent goal apart from racial discrimination that justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only racial marriages involving white people suggests that racial classification should stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain the White Supremacy.
Associate Justice Potter Stewart submitted a brief concurring opinion. He repeats his opinion from McLaughlin v. Florida that "it is absolutely impossible for state law to apply under our Constitution which makes the crime of action dependent on the race of actors."
Decision implications
For interracial marriage
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, anti-marriage laws remain in books in some states, although the decree makes them unenforceable. Local judges in Alabama continued to uphold state anti-misconduct laws until the Nixon government came to a decision from the US District Court in the United States v. Brittain in 1970. In 2000, Alabama became the last state to adapt its law to the Supreme Court decision, when 60% of voters supported a voting initiative that abolished the anti-separation language of the state constitution.
After Loving v. Virginia , the number of interracial marriages continues to increase across the United States and in the South. In Georgia, for example, the number of interracial marriages increased from 21 in 1967 to 115 in 1970. At the national level, 0.4% of marriages occurred between races in 1960, 2.0% in 1980, 12% in 2013, and 16% by 2015, nearly 50 years after Loving .
For same-sex marriage
Loving v. Virginia is discussed in the context of public debate on same-sex marriage in the United States.
In Hernandez v. Robles (2006), the opinion of the majority of the New York Court of Appeals - the state supreme court - refuses to rely on the case of Love when deciding whether the same kind of marriage rights exists, holding that "the historical setting of Love is different from the underlying history of the case." In a 2010 federal district court ruling at Perry v. Schwarzenegger, canceled California Proposition 8 limiting marriage to the opposite sex, Judge Vaughn R. Walker quoted Loving v. Virginia to conclude that "the [constitutional] right to marry protects the individual choice of a married couple regardless of sex". With a narrow reason, Circuit Court Circuit 9 affirms.
In June 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision at Loving , Mildred Loving issued a statement saying:
I believe all Americans, regardless of their race, regardless of their gender, no matter their sexual orientation, should have the same freedom to marry... I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard and my name are in the case courts that can help strengthen the love, commitment, justice and family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, looking for life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That is what is loved, and loved, all about.
Until 2014, five US Courts of Appeal consider the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. By doing so they interpret or use Compassion which governs differently:
- The Fourth and Tenth Circuits use Loving along with other cases like Zablocki v. Redhail and Turner v. Safley to indicate that the US Supreme Court has recognized "the fundamental right to marry" that a country can not limit unless it meets the standards of "close supervision" of the courts. Using that standard, both courts rejected the state's ban on same-sex marriage.
- The other two appellate courts, Seventh and Ninth Circuit, drop the state ban on the basis of different arguments. Instead of a "fundamental rights" analysis, they review same sex marriage bans as discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The first quoted Loving to show that the Supreme Court did not accept tradition as justification for limiting access to marriage. The latter cited Loving as quoted in United States v. Windsor on the question of federalism: "State laws define or regulate marriage, of course, must respect the constitutional rights of people".
- The only Appeals Court to enforce a state ban on same-sex marriage, the Sixth Circuit, says that when the Decision Loves discusses marriage which refers only to marriage between people of the opposite sex.
In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), who ruled this issue, the Supreme Court asked Loving , among other cases, as a precedent for its ownership that states are required to allow the same. -sex wedding under both Clause Equal Protection and Clause Process Because of the Constitution. The court ruling in Obergefell is quoted as Likely nearly a dozen times, and based on the same principle - equality and the right to marriage are incalculable. During the oral argument, the author ultimately held a majority opinion, Judge Anthony Kennedy, noting that the decision to hold racial segregation and a ban on unconstitutional racial marriages ( Brown v. Board of Education and Loving , respectively ), made about 13 years apart, such as the decision prohibiting the prohibition of same-sex sexual activity ( Lawrence v. Texas ) and Obergefell .
Memory and representation in popular culture
In the United States, June 12, the date of the decision, has been known as Loving Day, the annual celebration of unofficial racial marriage. In 2014, Mildred Loving is honored as one of the Virginia Library "Virginia Women in History". In 2017, Virginia Historical Resource Department dedicated a state history marker, which tells the story of Love, outside Patrick Henry's Building in Richmond - the former High Court of Appeal of Virginia.
The story of Love became the basis of several films:
- First, Master. and Mrs. Loving (1996), written and directed by Richard Friedenberg and starring Lela Rochon, Timothy Hutton, and Ruby Dee. According to Mildred Loving, "not much is true.The only correct part is I have three children."
- The second film, documentary Nancy Buirski The Loving Story, aired on HBO in February 2012 and won the Peabody Award that year.
- The third movie, Loving , was released in 2016, directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton as the Lovings. The film is based on the Buirski documentary. Negga received an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
A 2015 novel by French journalist Gilles Biassette, L'Amour des Loving ("Love of Love", ISBN 978-2917559598), tells of the life of Love and their case. The photo essay on the couple by Gray Villet, made before the case, was reissued in 2017.
Nanci Griffith's Album 2009 The Loving Kind is named for Lovings and contains songs about them.
The four-part film, The Loving Generation, airs on Topic.com in February 2018. Directed and produced by Lacey Schwartz and Mehret Mandefro, the film explores the lives of biracial children born after Loving decision.
References
Further reading
External links
Links with court decision text
- Working related to Loving v. Virginia on Wikisource
- Text Loving v. Virginia , 388 US 1 (1967) is available from: Ã, Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar OpenJurist Oyez
Other external links
- Extraordinary Interracial Marriage; Loving v. Virginia at 40. ABC News Interview with Mildred Jeter Loving & amp; video from the original broadcast of 1967. June 14, 2007.
- Resources at Oyez.org include full audio of oral arguments.
- Loving Decision: 40 Years of Interracial Law of the Union, National Public Radio: All Things Considered , June 11, 2007.
- 4th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia : Legacy Legal Case Ends Legal Ban on Inter-Race Wedding, Findlaw Commentary by Joanna Grossman.
- Chin, Gabriel and Hrishi Karthikeyan, (2002) Asian Law Journal , vol. 9 "Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and Implementation of the Anti-Missigenasi Statute to Asia America, 1910-1950"
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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