Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that 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, including in the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
The case involved Richard Loving, a white man, and his wife Mildred Loving, a person of color. In 1959, the Lovings were sentenced to prison for violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The prison sentence was suspended on condition they leave the state and not return. The Lovings moved to vacate their convictions in 1963. After unsuccessfully appealing to the Supreme Court of Virginia, they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Racial Integrity Act was unconstitutional.
In June 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 conductānamely, that of getting marriedāthat 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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