McLaughlin v. Florida

In 1962, Dewey McLaughlin, a Miami Beach hotel porter originally from Honduras, and Connie Hoffman, a Caucasian waitress, were an unmarried couple living together in a Miami Beach apartment located at 732 2nd Street. Their landlady, Dora Goodnick, had rented the apartment only to Hoffman, and, when she found out about McLaughlin, she did not want the interracial unmarried couple living in the apartment. In an effort to get them out, Goodnick complained to the Miami Beach police that Hoffman's son was wandering the streets after midnight.[4] Police investigated the matter, and, after the couple admitted that they were unmarried and lived together, they were charged in Florida state court with the crime of a black man and a white woman habitually living in and occupying in the nighttime the same room. A jury trial resulted in a verdict of guilt, a sentence of thirty days in the county jail, and a fine of $150 for each defendant.

Section 798.05 of Florida statutes read: "Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars."

This law was a part of the adultery and fornication laws of Florida. While all the other sections of this chapter required proof that sexual intercourse took place, Section 798.05 required only cohabitation. The law specifically prohibited a couple in which one is white and the other is black. It did not apply to any other racial groups or combinations. It was part of Florida's anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting marriage, cohabitation, and extramarital sex between whites and blacks, and addressed only relationships between whites and non-whites. Similar anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in many states into the 1960s, and by all Southern states until 1967, when all remaining state bans on interracial marriage between whites and non-whites were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.[5]

Justice White in his majority opinion held that the law, as it made a special case for couples of these two specific races, bore a "heavier burden of justification". Florida had not demonstrated any reason that made such a race-specific prohibition necessary.

That a general evil will be partially corrected may at times, and without more, serve to justify the limited application of a criminal law; but legislative discretion to employ the piecemeal approach stops short of permitting a State to narrow statutory coverage to focus on a racial group.

Justice Harlan, in his concurrence, emphasized the "heavier burden" requirement that White described and wrote that the law should pass a "necessity test", which is very stringent and applied to free speech cases.

Justices Stewart and Douglas joined in an even stronger concurrence and denied even the possibility of an "overriding statutory purpose" that would justify such a law. Stewart wrote, "We deal here with a criminal law which imposes criminal punishment. And I think it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor. Discrimination of that kind is invidious per se."

Though the state claimed that Section 798.05 (prohibiting cohabitation) was ancillary to Section 741.11 (prohibiting intermarriage), the Court did not consider the latter statute, and it remained in force until Loving v. Virginia (1967).

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 379
• Pace v. Alabama
• Perez v. Sharp
• Loving v. Virginia

• Text of McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964) is available from:  CourtListener  Findlaw  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress  Oyez (oral argument audio)