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The court case involved a legal challenge over the conflicting wills that had been left by the late Allan Monks, an old one in favor of a friend named Ida Lee and a newer one in favor of his wife. Lee's lawyers charged that the marriage of the Monkses, which had taken place in Arizona, was invalid under Arizona state law because Marie Antoinette was "a Negro" and Alan had been white. He court, however, dismissed this argument as inapplicable, because the case presented involved not two mixed-race spouses but a mixed-race and a white spouse: "Under the facts presented the appellant does not have the benefit of assailing the validity of the statute." Dismissing Monks' appeal in 1942, the United States Supreme Court refused to reopen the issue. .
The turning point came with Perez v. Sharp (1948), also known as Perez v. Lippold. In Perez, the Supreme Court of California recognized that bans on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Took until 1948 before any court in the country mustered the commitment to the constitutional mandate of equality for all and the courage to reject political and social pressure in order to strike down race discrimination in marriage With its 4-3 decision in Perez v. Sharp, the California Supreme Court entered history as an example of a court's willingness to stand up for justice in the case before it, without fear or favor.
The Loving v. Virginia case touched on constitutional principles including equality, federalism, and liberty. Just over 30 years ago, it was a crime for interracial couples in Virginia to marry, or to live as husband and wife. The United States has a long history of the existence of anti-miscegenation laws that forbid interracial marriage. The case presents the constitutional question 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.
