Free Republic

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or...

World War II was still raging when Andrea Perez and Sylvester Davis applied to the Los Angeles County clerk's office for a marriage license and were turned down because a state law prohibited "all marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race or mulattoes. … " In 1948, the California Supreme Court ruled in their favor, albeit by a 4-3 margin, striking down the state's 1872-vintage anti-miscegenation law. Roger Traynor, later to become the court's chief justice, rejected defense arguments that nonwhites were mentally or socially inferior and declared in the majority opinion that marriage is...