Which U.S. Supreme Court case legalized interracial marriage?

The U.S. Supreme Court case that invalidated laws banning interracial marriage was Loving v. Virginia.

The Court ruled unanimously on June 12, 1967, that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision struck down similar marriage bans still enforced in several other states, making such restrictions unenforceable nationwide.

Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter Loving, a Black woman, married in Washington, D.C., in 1958 because Virginia prohibited their marriage. After returning home, they were prosecuted under Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and sentenced to leave the state for 25 years. Their case reached the Supreme Court with help from the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ruling is often described as having “legalized” interracial marriage, but more precisely it invalidated state bans that had already been repealed or were not enforced in some places. It also recognized marriage as a fundamental liberty. Loving is different from Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case concerning same-sex marriage.