McLaughlin v. Florida

McLaughlin v. Florida
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 13–14, 1964 Decided December 7, 1964
Full case name	McLaughlin, et al. v. Florida
Citations	379 U.S. 184 (more) 85 S. Ct. 283; 13 L. Ed. 2d 222; 1964 U.S. LEXIS 63
Case history
Prior	Defendants convicted, Fl Sup Ct affirmed. Appeal from the Supreme Court of Florida
Subsequent	Convictions set aside
Holding
Florida statute prohibits an unmarried interracial couple from habitually living in and occupying the same room in the nighttime. The same conduct when engaged in by members of the same race, is not prohibited. This is in violation of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority	White, joined by Warren, Black, Clark, Harlan, Brennan, Goldberg
Concurrence	Harlan
Concurrence	Stewart (in judgment), joined by Douglas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Fla. Stat. § 798.05
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Pace v. Alabama (1883) (in part)

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McLaughlin v. Florida

McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a cohabitation law of Florida, part of the state's anti-miscegenation laws, was unconstitutional.^[1] The law prohibited habitual cohabitation by two unmarried people of opposite sex, if one was black and the other was white. The decision overturned Pace v. Alabama (1883),^[2] which had declared such statutes constitutional. It did not overturn the related Florida statute that prohibited interracial marriage between whites and blacks. Such laws were declared unconstitutional in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia.^[3]