Perez V. Sharp - Background

Background

Andrea Perez (a Mexican American woman ) and Sylvester Davis (an African American man ) met while working in the defense industry in Los Angeles.

Perez and Davis applied for a marriage license with the County Clerk of Los Angeles. On the application for a marriage license, Andrea Perez listed her race as “white,” and Sylvester Davis identified himself as “Negro.” Under the California law, individuals of Mexican ancestry generally were classified as white because of their Spanish heritage.

The County Clerk (named W.G. Sharp) refused to issue the license based on California Civil Code Section 60, which provided that “All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void,” and also on Section 69, which stated that ". . . no license may be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race". At the time, California's anti-miscegenation statute had banned interracial marriage since 1850, when it first enacted a statute prohibiting whites from marrying blacks or mulattoes.

Perez petitioned the California Supreme Court for an original Writ of Mandate to compel the issuance of the license. Perez and Davis were both Catholics and wanted to marry in a mass in a Catholic Church. One of their primary arguments, adopted by Justice Douglas Edmonds in his concurring opinion, was that the Church was willing to marry them, and the state's anti-miscegenation law infringed on their right to participate fully in the sacraments of their religion, including the sacrament of matrimony.