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The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from
Mississippi residents who have completed their sentences, but
who have been unable to regain their right to vote.
The court's action let stand a ruling by the full 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected the claim that permanent
loss of voting rights amounted to cruel and unusual punishment
in violation of the Constitution. Mississippi legislators, not
the courts, must decide whether to change the laws, the 5th
circuit said.
Using different legal arguments, lawyers failed to get the
Supreme Court to take up the felon disenfranchisement issue in
2023, over a dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that was
joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Mississippi’s list of
disqualifying crimes was “adopted for an illicit discriminatory
purpose,” Jackson wrote.
No justice noted a dissent from Monday's order.
Most of the people affected are disenfranchised for life because
the state provides few options for restoring ballot access.
Lawyers who brought the case to the court argued that the state
is an outlier and its bar on voting is a vestige of segregation.
Authors of the state’s 1890 constitution based
disenfranchisement on a list of crimes they thought Black people
were more likely to commit, the lawyers argued. But the state
responded that the Supreme Court has previously made clear that
states may refuse to deny the right to vote to people convicted
of felonies.
About 38% of Mississippi residents are Black. Nearly 50,000
people were disenfranchised under the state’s felony voting ban
between 1994 and 2017. More than 29,000 of them have completed
their sentences, and about 58% of that group are Black,
according to an expert who analyzed data for plaintiffs
challenging the voting ban.
To regain voting rights in Mississippi, a person convicted of a
disenfranchising crime must receive a governor’s pardon or win
permission from two-thirds of the state House and Senate. In
recent years, legislators have restored voting rights for only a
few people.
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