3. Decision of the Court

After the grueling legal process of justifying their marriage, the Lovings were offered a decision of comfort. On June 12th of 1967, the case was decided and closed. The Supreme Court had ruled in their favor, stating it clearly with a 9-0 vote (http://www.answers.com/topic/loving-v-virginia). It was unanimous. The Virginia ban on inter-racial marriage was unconstitutional, and thus stricken from the books.

Written in Chief Justice Warren's closing statement regarding the case is the underlying reason: " The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html)."

Essentially, it was found that Virginia's argument that the law was constitutional on the basis that it said no white person could marry a person of color, as well as the vice-versa, was frivolous. The law was written only to ban the marriage of a white person to a person of color, thus was an outline of White Supremacy, and an unconstitutional act violating the Fourteenth Amendment.