[Please sign up here to have the Race/Related newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.]

Would you identify yourself as a Quadroon or a Moor? How about an Aryan or a Nubian?

Those were among the more than 200 categories that Brandyn Churchill and his fiancée, Sophie Rogers, were given to choose from as their race when they went to apply for a marriage license in Rockbridge County, Va., last week. And that, to them, was a vestige of an ugly history, a time when Virginia and other states used to prohibit people from marrying across racial lines.

“We’re looking and we see Aryan, Mulatto, all these terms that are not only outdated, but deeply offensive,” Mr. Churchill, 27, said about the list that county officials gave them. “How is that on a government document in 2019?”

With their planned wedding only a month and a half away, Mr. Churchill and Ms. Rogers left without getting a marriage license because they refused to list their races on their application. They are now among the plaintiffs who sued the state of Virginia in federal court last week, seeking to end the requirement.