Many people felt that such a ruling had been a long time coming. Despite the landmark 1952 case, Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court ruled that segregation within the public school system violated the equal protection clause, the Court seemed consistently reluctant to use its power to interpret laws concerning personal and private matters such as marriage. In fact, the Court had declined to rule on a case similar to the Lovings' in 1955. When the Loving decision was handed down twelve years later, sixteen states had laws akin to Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, and the consequences of this ruling were both sweeping and immediate. Over thirty years later, some are wondering how this decision might affect the issue of gay marriage and whether the Court could find a similar violation of the equal protection clause as applied to homosexuals' right to marry.

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