McLaughlin v. Florida

Background

A Black man and a white woman were charged under a Florida criminal law that made it an offense for a white person and a Negro to habitually occupy the same room at night if they were not married. The State convicted them under §798.05 after the jury found the elements the judge described. Other nearby Florida statutes punished adultery, lewd cohabitation, and fornication in ways that applied to all races.

Reasoning

The Court examined whether singling out an interracial couple for criminal punishment could be justified under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It rejected reliance on an older case that had treated such race-based laws as acceptable. The Court explained that racial classifications are constitutionally suspect and require strong justification. Florida said the law aimed to prevent promiscuity and protect marriage policy, but the Court found no convincing reason why the State needed a race-specific criminal rule when neutral laws already addressed illicit sexual conduct.

Real world impact

The Court held §798.05 invalid and reversed the convictions. That means people cannot be criminally punished under that specific statute for the same conduct solely because the participants are of different races. The opinion did not decide whether the State’s separate ban on interracial marriage is valid, and the Court expressly declined to rule on that law here.

Dissents or concurrances

Two Justices wrote separately: one stressed that a law making criminality depend on race is invidious per se; another agreed the statute failed because it was not shown to be necessary to any valid state interest.