Equal Protection Under the Law Research Paper

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Anti-Miscegenation Statutes in the U.S.

Introduction

Anti-miscegenation statutes in the U.S. had been in existence in many states since the early days of their founding. In California, for instance, the law forbidding the marriage of whites with non-white had existed since the middle of the 19th century—and it was not overturned until the state’s Supreme Court heard the case of Perez v. Sharp in 1948. Virginia had a similar anti-miscegenation statute, which was used to jail the Lovings who entered into an interracial marriage in the 1960s. This paper will look at two cases that challenged the Constitutionality of theses anti-miscegenation laws and how the rulings on them changed legislation throughout their respective states and ultimately throughout the country. It will also look at how these statutes might have impacted Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as explain the significance of these statutes to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOM).

Perez v. Sharp

In the case of Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711 (Cal. 1948), Perez—a Mexican-American woman—and Davis, and African-American man, applied for a marriage license in Los Angeles but were refused on the basis of the California Civil Code, which stated essentially that marriages of whites to blacks or any other race were to be considered null, void and illegal. The state’s anti-miscegenation statute was meant to regulate the intermingling of the white race with non-white races, and the administrative decision by Sharp was simply based on the statute in place throughout the state. In other words, it was not necessarily a personal decision on his part but rather an administrative act in accordance with the law, which it was his duty to adhere to in his position as county clerk. Since Mexican-Americans were considered “white,” the county clerk, W. G. Sharp, was simply following the letter of the law in his administrative capacity. Not to justify the statute, but in his defense, California’s anti-miscegenation law had been in effect for nearly a century and thus Sharp’s administrative duties were to follow the law. Perez, however, realized the injustice of the law and filed suit because she believed it was her basic right as a Roman Catholic and as an American citizen to marry whomever her Church saw fit for her to marry.

As both Perez and Davis were Catholic and argued that the Catholic Church was perfectly accepting of their marriage, the state of California should be as well. Their case was based, in other words, on the argument that California’s anti-miscegenation statute violated their rights under the 14th Amendment, which holds that states shall not pass laws that restrict the basic rights of American citizens.

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In the final ruling of the case, the basic civil right of Perez and Davis to be married as Roman Catholics according to the laws and prescriptions of their Church was recognized by the California Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Perez v. Sharp. The ruling thus overturned the state’s anti-miscegenation statute.

Loving v. Virginia

In the case of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), Mildred Loving—a “colored” woman—and Richard Loving, a white man, married in Virginia. The state of Virginia had an anti-miscegenation statute called the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The statute forbade whites and persons of “color” from marrying. Again, this statute was meant to regulate the intermingling of non-white races with the white race. The administrative force of the statute was used in the case of the Lovings to give an example to others. But, of course, by the late 1960s the consciousness of America had changed. The ruling classes were no longer in favor—and the ‘60s had become a turbulent time in a number of ways, what with the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Malcolm X and RFK, the rise of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the counter-culture movement embodied by the hippie generation. Against this backdrop, the Lovings were a target for the state of Virginia’s administration: they represented the new culture that did not care about race, racial integrity or racial purity. For the Lovings and their supporters, the state’s administrators were clinging on to an old way of looking at the world—a way that was no longer welcome in the U.S. by the new, rising order. Virginia found the Lovings guilty of interracial marriage and they were sentenced to a year in prison. The Lovings sued and the case was picked up by the Supreme Court.

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