Virginia had argued that its anti-miscegenation law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because it "equally burdened" both whites and non-whites, since the punishment for violating the statute was the same regardless of the offender's race. For example, a white person who married a black person received the same punishment as black person who married a white person. The Court had accepted this "equal burden" argument 84 years earlier in its 1883 decision "Pace v. Alabama". But in "Loving", the Court rejected the argument and overruled "Pace": "We reject the notion that the mere 'equal application' of a statute concerning racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's proscription of all invidious racial discriminations." The Court ruled that because the races of the people involved were the only factors determining whether or not they broke the law, the law was therefore a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.