Judicial Review of Antimiscegenation Laws: The Long Road to Loving
Rachel F. Moran Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance – pp. 76-100
Year Case State Held
1872 Burns v. State Alabama The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the ban on interracial marriages was unlawful. Citing the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, the court treated marriage as a contract in which blacks had every right to make.
The decision rejected the distinction between political
and social equality as justification for the ban, as well as the argument that the legislature had satisfied the requirement of equal treatment of equal treatment by imposing equal sanctions between races. 1877 Green v. State Alabama The Congress did not intend the Civil Rights Act to overturn any antimiscegenation laws. The decision explicitly adopted the distinction between political and social equality in upholding the restrictions on intermarriage.
According to the court, the law was racially neutral as
long as blacks and whites suffered comparable punishment.
The court saw proper marital choices a vital to the
state’s future. It re-characterized marriage as an instrument of public good, but not an endorsement of political equality at the altar. The antimiscegenation laws were a way to avoid the disruption of a segregated social order. 1881 Pace v. State Alabama The Alabama Supreme Court expanded on Green by allowing the state to punish interracial fornication and adultery more severely than an intraracial couple. Interracial adultery mean incarceration for 2 to 7 years, while the crime committed intraracially was punished only by a fine with the maximum incarceration time at 2 years. The court concluded that the law did not discriminate against races as it was the offense being punished, and not the person. UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES COLLEGE OF LAW Constitutional Law – Law 121 Atty. Dante Gatmaytan