Miscegenation Laws and the Bill of Rights

• Description: Laws that prohibited interracial marriages and often attached criminal penalties to sexual relations and cohabitation between White and non-White individuals.
• Relevant amendments: Fifth, Fourteenth

Significance: State miscegenation laws were examples of explicit racial discrimination in US statutory law—they criminalized and penalized the unions of persons of differing racial heritages and denied legal legitimacy to mixed-race children born to such interracial couples.

Thirty-eight of the states at one time had miscegenation laws in force—seven of those thirty-eight repealed their laws before 1900. All southern states—not including the District of Columbia—had miscegenation statutes. Many western states—including Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming—in addition to forbidding intermarriage between Black and White individuals, also specifically prohibited unions between White people and Indigenous Americans or White people and Asian Americans. Penalties upon conviction varied from a maximum imprisonment of more than two years in most of the South and some states—ten years in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and North Carolina—to sentences ranging between a few months and two years in other states. Enforcement of the laws was random and irregular.

The key case in ending miscegenation laws was Loving v. Virginia (1967). At the time that the US Supreme Court heard the Loving case, sixteen states still had miscegenation laws in force. Virginia’s laws dealing with racial intermarriage were among the nation’s oldest. They stemmed from statutes formulated in the colonial period (1691) and had been strengthened by more stringent miscegenation legislation passed in the mid-1920s, in which Whiteness was very narrowly defined. The codes that became law in 1924 were aimed primarily at discriminating against people of mixed Black heritage and White heritage with an Indigenous American background.

In the Loving case, Richard Perry Loving—who was White—married Mildred Delores Jester—who was a Black American—in Washington, DC, in June 1958. The Lovings made their home between Fredericksburg and Richmond in Caroline County, Virginia. They were issued warrants of arrest in July 1958. In January 1959, they were convicted before the Caroline County court of violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute. Their minimum sentences—one year imprisonment each—were suspended on the agreement that they would leave the state. They moved to Washington, DC, until 1963, when they returned to their farm in Virginia and worked with attorneys Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who placed their case under appeal. The miscegenation law and the Lovings’ convictions were upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in March 1966, but in June 1967, the US Supreme Court overruled the appellate finding. The Supreme Court ruled that the use of race as a basis for prohibiting marriage rights was unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling nullified all remaining laws forbidding interracial marriage. Previous to the unanimous 1967 ruling, the US Supreme Court took a conservative approach to this civil rights issue. It had repeatedly avoided reviewing lower court convictions based on state antimiscegenation laws—Jackson v. Alabama in 1954, Naim v. Naim in 1955, and McLaughlin v. Florida in 1964.

By the 2020s, the question of miscegenation appeared to be a closed matter, as these types of laws had been legally invalidated for more than half a century. Public sentiment also appeared such that the mere suggestion of miscegenation laws in the United States was considered abhorrent and a relic of a bygone era. Nonetheless, in 2022, the conservative supermajority in the US Supreme Court effectively overturned Roe v. Wade (1973)—a landmark case concerning reproductive rights. Many Americans had, for decades, considered Roe v. Wade as settled law. With the undoing of Roe v. Wade, many began to contemplate that many other laws considered as permanent fixtures in American jurisprudence were now subject to review. Members of the supermajority Roberts Court, in fact, rendered public statements to that very effect. Regarding miscegenation, in a 2024 article in The Nation, the publication quoted Indiana senator Mike Braun as suggesting that, similar to Roe v. Wade, the legality of interracial marriages could be a topic sent back to the states for re-examination. While miscegenation laws appeared unlikely to gather public support, in the mid-2020s, the potential for discrimination against other types of non-traditional marriages—such as those between same-sex couples—appeared to be at higher risk. In response, the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which Congress passed and President Joseph Biden signed, requires federal recognition of same‑sex and interracial marriages, and it obliges states to recognize such marriages if they were valid where performed.

Bibliography

Daily, Jane. "Interracial Marriage Under Attack: Thinking the Unthinkable." The Nation, 28 Mar. 2022, www.thenation.com/article/politics/interracial-marriage-supreme-loving/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2026.

Maldonado, Solangel. "Laws Meant to Keep Different Races Apart Still Influence Dating Patterns, Decades after Being Invalidated." The Conversation, 7 June 2024, theconversation.com/laws-meant-to-keep-different-races-apart-still-influence-dating-patterns-decades-after-being-invalidated-229246. Accessed 21 Jan. 2026.

Matza, Max. "Respect for Marriage Act: Why Interracial Marriage Is Also in the Law." BBC, 13 Dec. 2022, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63801108. Accessed 21 Jan. 2026.

Riga, Stephen A., et al. “Federal Law Recognizing Same-Sex, Interracial Marriages Under Federal Law Signed.” Ogletree Deakins, 20 Dec. 2022, ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/federal-law-recognizing-same-sex-interracial-marriages-under-federal-law-signed/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2026.