February – the month of all things Love, Black history, and apparently National Weddings Month. In honor of such things, let’s journey back in time to review historical cases that literally changed the law when it comes to family law, marriage, and love: Loving v. Virginia (1967) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
Prior to 1967:
All but nine states in the United States had anti-miscegenation laws at some point. These laws limited who was legally allowed to marry a white person. Sixteen states, including Virginia, still had and enforced anti-miscegenation laws into 1963. When a married couple whose marriage violated said laws wanted to return to their home in Virginia, everything changed.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967): The landmark constitutional case decided June 12, 1967, struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law – the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, an African American woman, married in Washington D.C. in June 1958 and then returned to Virginia to live together as a married couple. In July of 1958, the police raided their home, found the couple in bed together along with their marriage license. They were charged criminally under Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act and faced up to five years in prison. The couple later pled guilty to violation of Virginia state law by being an inter-racial couple and living as husband and wife. The judge gave them one year and suspended the sentence on the condition they left Virginia and did not return for twenty-five years. The couple returned to Washington, D.C., in accordance with the Judge’s directive. Five years after their conviction, they sought to have their convictions overturned and return to Virginia.
After a lengthy appellate process, the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned their convictions and held that Virginia’s state law banning marriage between white and non-white people violated the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court also classified marriage as a fundamental right. Moving forward, any law in any state that limited a person’s right to marry had to pass an extremely high level of scrutiny. This case effectively removed the enforcement power of the sixteen remaining anti-miscegenation laws at that time. However, the last state did not repeal its anti-miscegenation law until 2000.
Prior to 2015:
Historically, laws across the United States limited a marriage to persons of opposite genders. In 1996, the 104th United States Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act which allowed states to deny recognition of same-sex marriages by other states. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Numerous states thereafter also recognized the freedom to marry regardless of gender, while many other states offered a legal alternative through recognition as civil unions or domestic partnerships.
In 2013, The Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) held several portions of the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. This ruling allowed same-sex spouses access to federal benefits and protections previously denied and required the Federal Government to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. However, this ruling did not make state bans on same-sex marriages illegal. At this point, thirteen states continued to have same-sex marriage bans. Upon this backdrop came the case that brought about “the day love won.”
Obergefell v. Hodges, 76 U.S. 644 (2015): Known as the case that lit the White House with the rainbow flag. In June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment required the recognition of same-sex marriages across all fifty states and held same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional.
Fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners had passed away had filed a legal claim against Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee for violation of their Fourteenth Amendment constitutional rights by either denying them the right to marry or refusing to recognize their marriage that was legally performed in another state. Initially, all of the couples were successful in district court. When the cases were appealed, they were consolidated into one case: Obergefell v. Hodges. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Courts’ decision and held that the states’ bans on same-sex marriage and refusal to acknowledge legal same-sex marriages performed out of state was not unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 2015, they were going to ultimately address the questions:
1. Is same-sex marriage constitutional?
2. Must same-sex marriage be recognized by individual states of the United States?
In a 5-4 decision, at times referencing the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia, the Justices ruled that same-sex marriages were just as valid as opposite-sex marriages and the law required them to be treated as such. The end of Justice Kennedy’s opinion states: “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Since this ruling, over 250,000 same-sex couples have joined the institution of marriage throughout the United States. While that increase has certainly boosted the economic condition of various states, it has increased the spread of love that exists in this world. In the month dedicated to love in all its forms – there is nothing more important than that.
If you would like to learn more about your marital rights, our Modern Legal team is here to help.
Written by: Tiffany A. Byrd
