Legal Defense Fund Carries Case of Interracial Pair to Supreme Court (McLaughlin v. Florida)

    \°/PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
1O COLUMBUS CIRCLE + NEWYORK19,N.Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS JACK GREENBERG CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY 
President Director-Counsel Associate Counsel 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND CARRIES CASE OF 
INTERRACIAL PAIR TO SUPREME COURT 

October 30, 1963 

Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense 

and Educational Fund, today released the following statement: 

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has taken ‘the case of Dewey 

McLaughlin, Negro and Connie Hoffman, white, charged with living 

together in Miami Beach, Florida to the U. S. Supreme Court. 

The Legal Defense Fund, which was asked to take the case 

while the appellants were still in jail, seeks to strike down 

three Florida statutes. 

Our jurisdictional statement, filed Octeber 28th, asserts 

that use of these laws provokes three questions, Is the Four- 

teenth Amendment violated where: 

(1) The State has created a crime expressly defined in 

terms of race which punishes Negroes and whites who engage in cer- 

tain conduct together, but dves not forbid such conduct engaged 

in by Negroes only or whites only? 

(2) Common law marriage is a defense for a couple charged 

under Florida law, but wasunavailable to appellants because 

Florida prohibits marriage between Negroes and whites? 

(3) Florida's purported definition of "Negro" and "white" 

persons - an essential element of the crime - is so vague and a 

indefinite as applied as to afford no fair warning to appellants om 

standard of criminality for the court or the jury? 

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund brief further argues that, 

"stripped of emotional overtones, the case is simple indeed, 

"Who would deubt that the equal protection clause weuld in- 

validate a scheme of laws providing that it was a crime for auto- 

mobiles occupied by Negroes and whites to exceed 25 M.P.H. but pro- 

viding no speed limit for any other automobiles, 

Such a legal scheme - and innumerable hypothetical parallels - 

Ss 



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Legal Defense Fund carries case of 
Interracial pair to Supreme Court Page 2 

would probably be laughed out of court with dispatch. But our 

t __ hypothesized speeding law shares the same infirmity - it punishes 

an activity only if and because it is interracial, f 

It must also be stressed that we do not challenge "the # 

é ou state's power to regulate sexual immorality. But this law does 

“not require any proof of sexual or other misconduct; it merely 

E regulates who occupies a room. 

There is some reason to doubt whether, aside from the racial 

dimensions of the law, Florida can justify punishing this conduct." 

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