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While it is no secret that racism lives on in the United States, it was nonetheless shocking news that a justice of the peace in Louisiana had refused to marry an interracial couple because he doesn’t “believe in mixing the races that way.” Keith Bardwell, the justice of the peace in question, has served in his elected position for 34 years, and his current term runs until December 31, 2014. By “mixing the races that way,” (emphasis added) Mr. Bardwell expanded that he is primarily concerned with the children of an interracial marriage, who–he concludes–are not accepted by either of their parents’ racial groups and often end up being raised by relatives other than their parents. He is quoted as saying:
Mr. Bardwell has also offered the media some other very interesting quotes. He has stated that he is not in fact a racist, pointing out that when he marries black couples, he allows them to use his bathroom. This statement supposes that a racist would not share a bathroom with someone of a different skin color. Segregated bathrooms were certainly the case under the Jim Crow laws that plagued the southern United States from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. Perhaps it is this type of manifested racism that Mr. Bardwell is referring to in defining himself as not a racist, particularly given that as late as 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court was still involved in dismantling Jim Crow laws by upholding the desegregation of public school buses in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. Given his lengthy tenure as Justice of the Peace it is likely that Mr. Bardwell remembers this era clearly, including the unanimous 1967 Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia prohibiting all race based restrictions on marriage.
Mr. Bardwell is also quoted as acknowledging reprimands from Louisiana’s Attorney General regarding his refusal to marry interracial couples. Hammond, Louisiana’s Daily Star newspaper writes that
It appears that Mr. Bardwell has been admonished and yet allowed to continue refusing to marry interracial couples. It is unclear who he was supposed to “get in trouble” with if not the Attorney General him or herself. As a justice of the peace he is formally part of Louisian’s judicial system, and so an agent of the state. Due to his official state position and the fact that the highest state officials were aware that he was breaking the law, it is likely that Louisiana and/or its highest state officials can be found liable for violating the prohibition on race based marriage restrictions. It would seem that, given Mr. Bardwell’s blatant refusal to comply with the law and his insistence that, despite his position as a public official, he had a “right” to break the law, Louisiana officials should have forced him to resign many years ago. That his current tenure extends to 2014 is also problematic. Given Mr. Bardwell’s adamant admission of his practice of refusing to marry interracial couples, Louisiana should at the very least temporarily suspend him from his position until the case is formally resolved.
The fact that Mr. Bardwell has been allowed to do this for so long also raises the question of whether Louisiana should undertake a more systematic investigation into its justice of the peace system. It is one of the few remaining states in the U.S. that employs justices of the peace, a position inherited from the UK and utilized for minor administrative legal tasks that nevertheless can have a huge impact on people’s lives, such as issuing a search warrant or signing a marriage license. Given that Louisiana has apparently turned a blind eye to Mr. Bardwell’s actions for so many decades, it could be the case that racial prohibitions on or obstacles to marriage are taking place in other pockets of the law.
The evidence that Louisiana state officials tolerate and perpetuate race based marriage obstruction implies Louisiana’s tolerance for racism in its myriad forms. At a minimum the state of Louisiana should publicly clarify that the law prohibits race based restrictions on marriage and explain the state’s process for ensuring that state officials uphold the law. It should also clarify the mechanisms and programs it utilizes to end racism and discrimination of all kinds, and perhaps its plans to reinvigorate them. At the moment, it is giving the impression that it has been asleep at the wheel and complicit in and thus liable for state administered racism.
