## Facts

- Burns, a white justice of the peace in Mobile, Alabama, solemnized a marriage between Thomas Woods, a Black man, and Echie Bunch, a white woman.
- Alabama law prohibited any person from performing marriages between “white persons and persons of color.”
- Burns was indicted under the statute, convicted in the trial court, and fined.
- Burns appealed, arguing the statute was invalid under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.

## Issues

1. Whether a state statute criminalizing the solemnization of interracial marriages is displaced by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteeing equal contract rights.
2. Whether prohibiting interracial marriage violates the Fourteenth Amendment by denying persons of color equal citizenship and equal rights to contract.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Alabama reversed Burns’s conviction.
- The court held the anti-interracial-marriage statute could not be enforced because it conflicted with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The court treated marriage as a civil contract, placing it within the federal guarantee of equal contract rights.

## Legal Principles

- Marriage, for purposes of municipal law, is a civil contract subject to general rules governing contractual capacity and legality.
- Under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the “same right to make a contract as is enjoyed by white citizens” includes the right to make any contract that white citizens may make, including marriage.
- Equal-rights guarantees are not satisfied by “equal disability” schemes that impose the same race-based prohibition on both races; laws that proscribe conduct by race conflict with federal equality guarantees.
- The Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship guarantee, together with federal civil-rights legislation, limits state power to deny a class of contracts to persons of color based on race.
- When state law conflicts with controlling federal law, the state law is unenforceable under federal supremacy principles.

## Conclusion

The Alabama Supreme Court set aside the conviction of a justice of the peace for officiating an interracial marriage, reasoning that marriage is a civil contract and that federal law required persons of color to have the same right as white citizens to enter into contracts, making the state prohibition invalid.


Burns v. State, 48 Ala. 195 (Ala. 1872)