June 12: Loving v. Virginia
The Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967) eliminated another form of legal discrimination based on race. Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving arrested in Virginia for violating a law that forbade mixed-race marriages. The Supreme Court unanimously struck down this antimiscegenation statute. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.” This freedom to marry whomever one wants was also an issue in future cases, notably Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which granted the right to same-sex marriages.