''Pace v. Alabama'', 106 U.S. 583 (1883), was a case in which the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
affirmed that Alabama's
anti-miscegenation statute was constitutional.
[. ] This ruling was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1964 in ''
McLaughlin v. Florida'' and in 1967 in ''
Loving v. Virginia''. ''Pace v. Alabama'' is one of the oldest interracial sex court case in America.
[
]
Summary
The plaintiff
A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of t ...
, Tony Pace, an African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
man, and Mary Cox, a white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...
woman, were residents of the state of Alabama, who had been arrested in 1881 because their sexual relationship violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute. They were charged with living together "in a state of adultery or fornication" and both sentenced to two years imprisonment in the state penitentiary in 1882.
Because "miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
", that is marriage, cohabitation and sexual relations between people of different racial backgrounds, was prohibited by Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute (Ala. code 4189), it would have been illegal for the couple to marry in Alabama. However, Tony Pace and Mary Cox were not married, for this reason, and they did not live together. They spent time together near their homes in Clarke County Clarke County may refer to:
;Places
*One of five counties in the United States:
**Clarke County, Alabama
**Clarke County, Georgia
**Clarke County, Iowa
**Clarke County, Mississippi
**Clarke County, Virginia
Clarke County is a county in the Com ...
, north of Mobile. They could not marry each other under Alabama law. Interracial marital sex was deemed a felony
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that resu ...
, whereas extramarital sex ("adultery
Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal ...
or fornication") was only a misdemeanor.
Because of the criminalization of interracial relationships, they were penalized more severely for their extramarital relationship than if they had been of the same race. The Alabama code stated:
Appeals
Procedural error in Cox indictment
Cox argued to the state Supreme Court
In the United States, a state supreme court (known by other names in some states) is the highest court in the state judiciary of a U.S. state. On matters of state law, the judgment of a state supreme court is considered final and binding in b ...
that her indictment should be quashed on the basis that she had been charged and indicted under the name "Mary Ann Cox," but her name was in fact, "Mary Jane Cox". The Alabama Supreme Court rejected this argument and upheld the indictment, stating, "The law knows but one Christian name, and the insertion or omission of a defendant's middle name in an indictment is entirely immaterial; and a mistake in the middle name will not support a plea of misnomer."
Fourteenth Amendment
On appeal to the Supreme Court of the state, the judgment was affirmed. Pace brought the case there, insisting that the act which he was indicted and convicted under conflicted with the final clause of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
of the laws.
Final decision
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions. Each defendant's punishment was the same. The punishment for interracial cohabitation was focused not "against the person of any particular color or race, but against the offense, the nature of which is determined by the opposite color of the cohabiting parties.” The “evil tendency” was greater in that kind of relationship than if both defendants were of the same race, since it could lead to “a mongrel population and a degraded civilization.” The true severity of their offense did not really stem from the interracial relationship, but instead that the fornication could end in an amalgamation, or, simply, a mixed-race child.
On further appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the court ruled that the criminalization of interracial sex did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because whites and non-whites were punished in equal measure for the offense of engaging in interracial sex. The Court did not need to affirm the constitutionality of the ban on interracial marriage that was also part of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law, since the plaintiff had chosen not to appeal that section of the law.
Later cases
The decision was understood, from that time to the 1960s, as reflecting a validation of state anti-miscegenation laws. However, the Supreme Court had not confronted the question of whether, given that Pace and Cox could not become husband and wife, they would inevitably be liable to prosecution for "adultery or fornication" if they lived as such. Only by implication had the ban against interracial marriage been addressed. Moreover, only by indirection did the Court address the question of whether, since it was a first offense, the sentence should have been for no more than six months. However, the later case ''Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in qualit ...
'' (joined by all Supreme Court Justices other than John Marshall Harlan
John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1877 until his death in 1911. He is often called "The Great Dissenter" due to his ...
), the Supreme Court in dicta
In general usage, a dictum ( in Latin; plural dicta) is an authoritative or dogmatic statement. In some contexts, such as legal writing and church cantata librettos, ''dictum'' can have a specific meaning.
Legal writing
In United States legal term ...
stated that "Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the State."
In any event, the Court had upheld the Alabama laws, and no southern state, for the next 80 years, displayed any inclination to repeal such laws. The Supreme Court's decision in ''Pace v. Alabama'' would prove to have an even more durable career in the American law of interracial sex and, by extension, marriage than ''Plessy v. Ferguson'' would have on segregated transportation and, by extension, education.
After ''Pace v. Alabama'', the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws banning marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged until the 1940s. In 1967, these laws were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in '' Loving v. Virginia'' (1967).
References
External links
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{{US14thAmendment
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Waite Court
United States equal protection case law
Multiracial affairs in the United States
1883 in United States case law
Race and law in the United States
Interracial marriage in the United States
1883 in Alabama
Legal history of Alabama
Overruled United States Supreme Court decisions
Criminal cases in the Waite Court
Clarke County, Alabama
Marriage law in the United States