Perez v. Sharp

Perez v. Sharp
Supreme Court of California
Decided October 1, 1948
Full case name	Andrea D. Perez and Sylvester S. Davis, Jr. v. A.W. Sharp, as County Clerk of the County of Los Angeles
Citation(s)	32 Cal.2d 711, 198 P.2d 17
Case history
Prior history	none (original proceeding for writ of mandate)
Holding
Marriage is a fundamental right in a free society; the state may not restrict this right with respect to restrictions based upon the race of the parties.
Court membership
Chief Justice	Phil S. Gibson
Associate Justices	John W. Shenk, Douglas L. Edmonds, Jesse W. Carter, Roger J. Traynor, B. Rey Schauer, Homer R. Spence
Case opinions
Plurality	Traynor, joined by Gibson, Carter
Concurrence	Edmonds
Concurrence	Carter
Concur/dissent	Shenk, joined by Schauer, Spence
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. XIV cl. 1, and Cal. Civ. Code, §§ 60, 69, 69a

Perez v. Sharp,^[1] also known as Perez v. Lippold or Perez v. Moroney, is a 1948 case decided by the Supreme Court of California in which the court held by a 4–3 majority that the state's ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The three justice plurality decision was authored by Associate Justice Roger J. Traynor who would later serve as the Court's Chief Justice. Justice Douglas L. Edmonds wrote his own concurrence of the judgment, leading to a four-justice majority in favor of striking down the law. The dissent was written by Associate Justice John W. Shenk, the second longest-serving member in the Court's history and a notable judicial conservative. The opinion was the first of any state to permanently strike down an anti-miscegenation law in the United States.