Court upholds Mississippi voting ban on people convicted of felonies

A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit related to Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution, which permanently disenfranchises voters convicted of a set of crimes. 

The full-court 5th Circuit panel held 13-6 that Section 241 does not violate the U.S. Constitution. 

“Holding Art. XII, Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution categorically unconstitutional … would thwart the ability of the State’s legislature and citizens to determine their voting qualifications, and would require federal courts overtly to make legislative choices that, in our federal system, belong at the State level,” the majority wrote. 

“Do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change. The paramount lesson of the Constitution and Richardson is that the changes sought by Plaintiffs here can and must be achieved through public consensus effectuated in the legislative process, not by judicial fiat,” it added.

The Mississippi law bars people convicted of bribery, theft, arson, perjury, forgery, embezzlement or bigamy from reinstating their voting rights. 

The plaintiffs in the case argued that Section 241 violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

"Denying broad groups of our citizens, for life, the ability to have a role in determining who governs them diminishes our society and deprives individuals of the full rights of representative government," Jon Youngwood, who represented one of the plaintiff's counsel, wrote to The Hill in a statement. "We remain confident in this case, and our clients remain committed to ensuring that their right to vote is restored.”

Previously, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit ruled 2-1 that the section was a “cruel and unusual” punishment, declaring it illegal. 

"Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement,” the majority wrote in the three-judge panel ruling.

It added that by "severing former offenders from the body politic forever, Section 241 ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society.”

However, in Thursday’s full-court opinion, the majority wrote that “Every circuit court that has had the chance to invalidate felon disenfranchisement has rejected the opportunity.” 

“We should not be the first to break new ground,” they add. 

Judge James L. Dennis wrote the dissenting opinion, which was joined by five other judges appointed by Democratic presidents, slamming the majority “for stretching the Supreme Court’s Equal Protection” doctrine “beyond recognition. 

“Denying released offenders the right to vote takes away their full dignity as citizens, separates them from the rest of their community, and reduces them to 'other' status,” he adds. 

In June, the Supreme Court in a brief unsigned order declined to hear a separate case on Section 241 in which the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union argue that the law is discriminatory against Black Mississippians. 

According to the nonprofit Sentencing Project, Mississippi has one of the strictest disenfranchisement laws in the nation, impacting about 11 percent of otherwise eligible voters, which is the highest proportion in the state.