06/14/2026
Thanks to my colleague Andi Geloo for her efforts to remove the name Harry Carrico from Virginia's mandatory lawyer professionalism course and award of the Virginia State Bar. Thanks also for Andi's article that quotes the views of two in*******al public defenders. One wrote the bar's Standing Committee on Professionalism: "'The video shown at the beginning of the course glorified Justice Carrico without acknowledging some of his very deep faults....'" Another wrote to the Bar: "'As a child of a mom who is white and a dad who is black, I would not be here if Judge Carrico's views had been upheld. I would not be an attorney helping serve Portsmouth's indigent population. Everyone as members of the bar should be promoting diversity and inclusion and the name of this course does the exact opposite.'" Andi reports that "the committee emailed... to say it had discussed the matter privately and declined to change the name."
https://richmond.com/opinion/column/article_c34d8c45-acc9-4c43-9595-1c01919a25d3.html (When I took the mandatory course, Carrico was still state chief justice, and spoke in person (with no video running), before I knew of his involvement with Loving.)
The committee may have dismissed the matter, but cannot dismiss this being pilloried in the court of public opinion. Here is where you can make a difference, including to tell the Virginia Bar https://VSB.org that it is bad enough to have judge Carrico's name on the professionalism award, but even worse to have his name on the professionalism course that all Virginia lawyers are required to take, sending the wrong message about racial justice. Here are talking points from my 2025 dissenting letter to the Virginia Supreme Court: https://katzjustice.com/wp-content/uploads/Justice-Goodwyn-Letter.pdf
Judge Carrico could say all he wanted that stare decisis of state supreme court opinions was going to be followed. He could say all he wanted that the federal Supreme Court "had made no decision at variance with an earlier holding by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Stevens United States, 146 F.2d 120, that 'a state is empowered to forbid marriages between persons of African descent and persons of other races or descents. Such a statute does not contravene the Fourteenth Amendment.'" Carrico further wrote: "A decision by this court reversing the Naim case upon consideration of the opinions of such text writers would be judicial legislation in the rawest sense of that term. Such arguments are properly addressable to the legislature, which enacted the law in the first place, and not to this court, whose prescribed role in the separated powers of government is to adjudicate, and not to legislate." Loving v. Com., 206 Va. 924 (1966), reversed by 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
When the matter finally came before the federal Supreme Court, SCOTUS unanimously invalidated laws against in*******al marriage. https://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html
I encourage you to urge the Virginia State Bar to remove judge Carrico's name from the mandatory professionalism course, and award.
This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment...
