Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren held that Virginia’s law prohibiting interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Warren began by addressing the state’s arguments that the Racial Integrity Act was part of the state’s legitimate interest to “preserve the racial integrity” and prevent “the corruption of blood”, stating that such arguments were “obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.”

Warren explained that the Equal Protection Clause requires that racial classifications in law be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny”. Applying this standard to Virginia’s law, Warren asserted that “[t]here is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates [that they are] designed to maintain White Supremacy”. Warren also argued that the law violated the Due Process Clause, explaining that “[m]arriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. . . To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

Ultimately, Warren reversed the Lovings’ convictions and declared that “[u]nder our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”