McLaughlin v. Florida
The Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that made it a crime only for an unmarried Black person and a white person to habitually share a room at night, ruling the law's racial classification violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.
In doing so, the Court abandoned its own 1883 precedent, Pace v. Alabama, which had upheld harsher penalties for interracial couples on the theory that a law treats people equally as long as it applies the same punishment to everyone it covers. The ruling signaled that laws singling out interracial relationships for special criminal treatment would face the toughest constitutional scrutiny.
How it got here: Florida's Supreme Court upheld the convictions relying on Pace v. Alabama; the couple appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Two unmarried people, one Black and one white, were convicted under a Florida law making it a crime for an interracial, unmarried couple to habitually share a bedroom at night — conduct that was not criminal for same-race couples under the state's general adultery and fornication laws. They were fined and imprisoned. Florida's high court upheld the conviction, relying on an 1883 Supreme Court decision that had approved harsher punishment for interracial couples.
The question before the Court
Could Florida make it a crime for an unmarried Black person and a white person, but not same-race couples, to habitually share a bedroom at night?
Why it matters
The decision meant states could no longer write criminal statutes that applied only to interracial couples, even if both partners faced identical punishment. It stripped away the legal reasoning that had shielded segregation-era anti-miscegenation and cohabitation laws for over 80 years, setting the stage for the Court's later ruling striking down bans on interracial marriage itself.
What changes now
The convictions were reversed and the Florida statute was invalidated, so it could no longer be enforced against interracial couples. The Court explicitly declined to rule on Florida's separate ban on interracial marriage, leaving that question for another day — a question the Court would take up a few years later in Loving v. Virginia. No further proceedings were required for these appellants beyond setting aside their convictions.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly did not decide whether Florida's separate law banning marriage between Black and white people was constitutional, and it did not rule on due process or Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendment arguments the appellants raised. The ruling addressed only the cohabitation statute's equal protection problem.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Harlan
Justice Harlan joined the majority in full but wrote to stress that necessity, not mere reasonableness, is the correct test, drawing on First Amendment cases requiring narrow tailoring. He argued that whether the cohabitation law is seen as tied to the marriage ban or as resting on its own independent interest, it fails either way, so the Court need not decide the marriage ban's validity.
Concurrence — Justice Stewart
“I think it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor.”Stewart's view that no purpose could ever justify race-based criminal laws.
Justice Stewart, joined by Justice Douglas, agreed with the outcome but objected to the majority's suggestion that such a law could ever be valid if the State showed an overriding purpose. He argued no legitimate purpose could ever justify making the criminality of conduct depend on the race of the people involved, calling that kind of discrimination invidious per se.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that treating everyone within a defined class the same way is not enough to satisfy equal protection; the classification itself must have a reasonable and non-arbitrary relationship to a legitimate legislative purpose, a standard developed in a line of cases after the Court's 1883 ruling in Pace v. Alabama.
- Because the law singled out people by race, the Court applied the strictest level of scrutiny available in constitutional law, treating racial classifications by government as inherently suspect and requiring the State to show they were necessary, not merely convenient.
- The Court accepted that Florida's broader goal in this chapter of laws was discouraging illicit sexual relationships, but found nothing showing that an interracial couple sharing a room posed any different or greater risk of that conduct than a same-race couple.
- The Court noted that neutral, general-application provisions already covering adultery and fornication for all couples could serve Florida's stated goal just as well, so there was no necessity for a separate rule targeting only interracial couples.
- The Court also rejected Florida's argument that the room-sharing law was a necessary tool for enforcing its separate ban on interracial marriage, holding that even if that marriage ban were valid, a law used to enforce it must independently satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment, and Florida had not shown this one was necessary for that purpose.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Overrules Pace v. Alabama (106 U.S. 583)
Rejected the earlier ruling that equal punishment for interracial couples satisfied equal protection regardless of the classification's purpose.