--- title: Kentucky Clerk Refusing Marriage Licenses: What History Says description: Not everyone immediately accepted the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling about interracial marriage, either canonical: https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-09-01T16:08:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T10:36:15.982Z article:section: History og:title: A History Lesson for the Kentucky Clerk Refusing to Grant Marriage Licenses og:description: Not everyone initially accepted the court's ruling on interracial marriage, either og:url: https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146d32cb3d8bacdd/698861d82dce01cc159e5559/loving.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Mildred Loving, Richard Loving og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A History Lesson for the Kentucky Clerk Refusing to Grant Marriage Licenses twitter:description: Not everyone initially accepted the court's ruling on interracial marriage, either twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146d32cb3d8bacdd/698861d82dce01cc159e5559/loving.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A History Lesson for the Kentucky Clerk Refusing to Grant Marriage Licenses > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 1, 2015 4:08 PM UTC  A Jan. 26, 1965 photo of Mildred Loving and Richard P Loving A Jan. 26, 1965 photo of Mildred Loving and Richard P LovingAP  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 1, 2015 4:08 PM UTC In recent months, as the Supreme Court considered the question of marriage equality, one particular case served as a frequent point of comparison for advocates of gay marriage rights: _Loving v. Virginia_, the 1967 case that struck down laws that prevented interracial marriage. The case was even cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his [opinion](http://time.com/3937983/supreme-court-gay-marriage-ruling-2/) in the gay marriage case, _Obergefell v. Hodges_, when he noted that it established the precedent that marriage is “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” Now it seems that the link between _Loving_ and _Obergefell_ doesn’t end there. As a Kentucky county clerk [continues to refuse](http://time.com/4018478/kim-davis-kentucky-clerk/) to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples—despite _Obergefell_ and despite a refusal by the Supreme Court to get involved with her case—it’s worth remembering that it was years after _Loving_ before interracial marriage was actually a given across the United States. In theory, the _Loving_ ruling meant all anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were invalidated. At the time, more than a dozen states had such laws on the books. But three years later, when Sgt. Louis Voyer (who was white) and Phyllis Bett (who was black) tried to get married in Alabama, they were refused a license by Probate Judge C. Clyde Brittain, on the basis that Alabama law would have made such a license criminal. In fact, Alabama law still made Voyer and Bett’s coupledom criminal in itself, and the Alabama constitution actively barred state lawmakers from legalizing marriage between “any white person and a Negro, or descendant of a Negro.” In the resulting 1970 case [_United States v. Brittain_](https://scholar.google.com/scholar%5Fcase?case=4101369272554922509&)_,_ the district court ruling was extremely straightforward: there was no question that the Alabama laws in question were unconstitutional and that Voyer and Bett had the right to marry. The court even held that it didn’t matter if there were some other justification for not allowing them to do so—for example, if the bride did not properly provide proof of residence—because it was so obvious that the real motivation was racial. (This point is perhaps relevant today, as the Kentucky clerk in question has worked around the _Obergefell_ ruling by refusing to grant _all_ marriage licenses—but she has made no secret that her motivation is related to the question of her beliefs about marriage equality.) Nor did it matter that Voyer and Bett had gone ahead and gotten married in Tennessee. There was, the court ruled, reason enough for it to issue an opinion, just to set the record straight: --- > “” --- It took years for the last wave of such local tests of _Loving_ to finally die down, as [explained](https://books.google.com/books?id=K2uD5KdzqSYC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=united+states+v+brittain&source=bl&ots=iH3xNkzaCe&sig=Ddb7sl-gLPE0KspV%5F%5FgMlAKWdwE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBWoVChMIqciu8IXWxwIVATc-Ch25fg0l#v=onepage&q=united%20states%20v%20brittain&f=false) by Julie Lavonne Novkov in her book _Racial Union_. It took another decade or so for the echo of _Loving_‘s implications to pass through the courts. (It wasn’t until 1984, for example, that the court [ruled](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/466/429) interracial couples couldn’t be discriminated against in child-custody decisions.) And it wasn’t [until 2000](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/12/weekinreview/november-5-11-marry-at-will.html) that Alabama actually removed its long-unenforceable anti-miscegenation law from its books. If the fallout from _Loving_ is any indication, those who side with the Kentucky clerk may have years of fight left to go—but their battle will likely be a losing one in the end. **_Read TIME’s original coverage of the_** **Loving** **_case, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Anti-Miscegenation Statutes: Repugnant Indeed](http://time.com/vault/issue/1967-06-23/page/53/) _Read next:_ [_Kentucky Clerk Still Won’t Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses_](http://time.com/4018478/kim-davis-kentucky-clerk/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Download TIME’s mobile app for iOS to have your world explained wherever you go_](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-mobile/id328218429) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/"},"headline":"A History Lesson for the Kentucky Clerk Refusing to Grant Marriage Licenses","datePublished":"2015-09-01T16:08:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T10:36:15.982Z","description":"Not everyone immediately accepted the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling about interracial marriage, either","url":"https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/","keywords":["Civil Rights","politics","LGBT"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146d32cb3d8bacdd/698861d82dce01cc159e5559/loving.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146d32cb3d8bacdd/698861d82dce01cc159e5559/loving.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mildred Loving, Richard Loving","caption":"Mildred Loving, Richard Loving","creditText":"AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/civil-rights/","name":"Civil Rights"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/","name":"A History Lesson for the Kentucky Clerk Refusing to Grant Marriage Licenses"}}]}] ```