Case of Florida Couple Taken to Supreme Court

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Ask Supreme Ct. to Upset Convictions of Interracial Couple Under Fla. Law

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- Press Releases
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- LDF
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- 781b5c54-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 1. Case of Florida Couple Taken to Supreme Court, 1964. 781b5c54-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/4a108877-2df2-4344-86c5-13a16da2b265/case-of-florida-couple-taken-to-supreme-court. Accessed November 23, 2025.

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    10 Columbus Circle 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
Presiden 

ee Ae Knight Chalmers 
Director-Counsel 

Jack Greenberg Se hg 
October 14, 1964 Associate Counsel 

Constance Baker Motley 

CASE OF FLORIDA COUPLE 
TAKEN TO SUPREME COURT 

WASHINGTON--The NAACP LEGAL Defense Fund today asked the Supreme 
Court to overturn the jail sentences of a Miami couple convicted 
under #798,05 of the Florida statutes. 

This law makes it a crime for a "Negro man and white woman... 
who are not married to each other (to)...habitually live in and 
occupy in the night time the same room." 

The defendants in the case, Dewey McLaughlin, a British 
Honduran who was formerly a merchant seaman, and Connie Hoffman, 
were arrested in Miami in April, 1961. 

Their lawyers asked the Legal Defense Fund to assist in the 
case while the couple was still in jail. 

The Legal Defense Fund brief argued that the convictions and 
jail sentences violated the Fourteenth Amendment in several respects: 

* First, it was argued that the conviction was obtained 
under “an explicitly racial Florida law, which 
punishes an interracial couple for acts which are not 
prohibited if committed by persons of the same race." 

It was also asserted that if persons of the same 
race were involved, added proof would be required to 
convict under other Florida laws, and that this racial 
law violated the Constitution. 

* Second, it was argued that appellants were denied 
a chance to show that they had a valid common law 
marriage because of Florida's law prohibiting 
marriages between whites and Negroes. 

It was asserted that the law against intermarriage 
is an irrational discrimination based on discredited 
theories of Negro inferiority and race prejudice which 
the state cannot enforce under the Constitution. 

* Finally, it was argued that Florida's attempt to 
define a Negro as "every person having one-eighth or 
more of African or Negro blood" was unconstitutionally 
vague, and that the state had failed to prove that 
McLaughlin was a Negro by this test. The state relied 
on a policeman's testimony that in his opinion 
McLaughlin was a Negro. 

The brief quoted numerous scientific authorities to establish 
that there is no such thing as “Negro blood" and that "in every 
respect the blood of all human groups is the same." 

The case was argued by two members of the Legal Defense Fund 

Board of Directors, William T. Coleman, Jr. of Philadelphia, Pa. 
and Louis H. Pollak of New Haven, Conn. 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Sa 



Case of Florida Couple -2- 
Taken to Supreme Court October 14, 1964 

Mr. Coleman, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law 
School; was law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter; 
is a member of Pennsylvania Governor Scranton's Committee on 
Constitutional Revision; and served as a member of the staff of the 
te Commission, He is a partner in a large Philadelphia law 
irm, 

Mr. Pollak, a Yale Law School Alumnus, served as law clerk 
for the late Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge, worked in the 
State Department as assistant to Ambassador Phillip Jessup, and 
has been for some years a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. 

Pe oe 

¢

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Case of Florida Couple Taken to Supreme Court

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