Virginia citizens Richard Loving (white) and Mildred Jeter (black) married in Washington, DC in 1958. Their state prohibited interracial marriage by laws dating from slavery and endured during Jim Crow. State authorities arrested, indicted, and convicted the couple in 1959 for violating the Racial Integrity Act (1924). But a judge voided the one-year prison sentence for twenty-five years if they would leave Virginia.

They moved to the District of Columbia and found legal counsel. In 1963 the American Civil Liberties Union filed their petition against Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute. However, after three years of litigation, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled to sustain it. But the US Supreme Court invalidated that ruling 9–0 in 1967. “Virginia is now one of 16 States which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications,” the Court concluded, and it set aside such statutes in all states. It defined marriage as a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.