After doing a little more reading, perhaps I should say I would invalidate the law based on the due process clause of the 14th amendment, but not the equal protection clause.
Why's that?
For the mixed race business partnership law, because the law is interfering with how one is running their business.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but I just can't have an intelligent conversation with you about the 14th Amendment. But I'll give it one more shot.
Under established Constitutional precedent, ANY legal classification based upon, among other things, race and gender are subject to heightened scrutiny pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause. I already recited the test for "intermediate scrutiny" that applies to classifications based on sex. Classifications based on race go to the core of the very reason the 14th Amendment exists. As such, they are subject to "strict scrutiny," which has been called "strict in theory, but fatal in fact." That is because any legal classification based upon race is considered immediately suspect.
In order to survive strict scrutiny, the applicable government must prove that the "discriminatory" law (again, remember "to discriminate" has multiple meanings) is (1) narrowly tailored (2) to serve a compelling government interest. Courts typically start with the second "compelling interest" prong, and usually never even have to reach the narrow tailoring prong. That is because, under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the law abhors classifications on the basis of race. Only in the rarest of cases (e.g., limited affirmative action based upon a holistic review of applicants) has a compelling government interest ever been found. By the way, this is the body of law that the Court relied upon to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson in deciding Brown v. BoE (and the follow-on Brown cases).
It is emphatically the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause to sort out laws that classify based on a suspect classification. Those include race, religion, national origin, alienage status, sex/gender, illegitimacy (i.e., born out of wedlock), and disability. There are more, but those are the main ones. Technically, all legal classifications can be reviewed through the lens of the EPC, but if it's not a suspect classification, it gets "rational basis review," which nearly always results in a court rubber stamping the law/policy.
So, a law banning mix-raced business partnerships (or miscegenation laws, as in Loving v. Virginia) would 100% be tested pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. No educated person would argue otherwise.
