It was a Landmark civil case in which the Supreme Court declared Virginia’s Anti-miscegenation laws Unconstitutional. Back in June 1958 two residence of Virginia were married in the District of Columbia. These two persons were Mildred Jeter (who was a black woman) and Richard Loving (who was a white man). Well of course four decades ago this kind thing wasn’t as excepted as it is in modern time. When they returned to Virginia a grand jury issued an indictment charging them with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. The Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail. However, the sentenced was suspended for a period of twenty five years provided that they left Virginia and didn’t return for twenty five years together. According to the trial judge  “ Almighty God created the races white, black. Yellow, malay and red, and he  placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races show that he did not intend for races to mix.”

Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the court. “This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.”

After being convicted they moved to the District of Columbia. They filed a motion in the state trial court to void the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statues which they had violated were in contradiction to the Fourteenth Amendment.