Mississippi is violating the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment by permanently stripping voting rights from people convicted of some felonies, a federal appeals court panel ruled in a split decision Friday.
Two judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ordered the Mississippi secretary of state to stop enforcing a provision in the state constitution that disenfranchises people convicted of specific crimes, including murder, forgery and bigamy.
If the ruling stands, thousands of people could regain voting rights, possibly in time for the Nov. 7 general election for governor and other statewide offices.
Mississippi Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch expects to ask the full appeals court to reconsider the panel's 2-1 ruling, her spokesperson, Debbee Hancock, said Friday.
The 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative appeals courts in the U.S., and in 2022 it declined to overturn Mississippi's felony disenfranchisement provisions — a ruling that came in a separate lawsuit. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not consider that case, allowing the 2022 appeals court ruling to stand.
The two lawsuits use different arguments.
The suit that the Supreme Court declined to hear was based on arguments about equal protection. Plaintiffs said that the Jim Crow-era authors of the Mississippi Constitution stripped voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit, including forgery, larceny and bigamy.
The lawsuit that the appeals court panel ruled on Friday is based on arguments that Mississippi is imposing cruel and unusual punishment with a lifetime ban on voting after some felony convictions.
"Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear and consistent trend in our Nation against permanent disenfranchisement," wrote Judges Carolyn Dineen King and James L. Dennis.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of 10 specific felonies — including murder, forgery and bigamy — lose the right to vote. The state's attorney general expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.
when you go to prison and pay the price that society says your supposed to pay by serving your sentence, you get released. you’re done. How is it just that you have your right to vote permanently stripped from you?
if you were convicted of a violent crime and were proven not to be able to be trusted with a firearm, I can understand not being able to ever own a gun again, and a felony record already makes it next to impossible to find a decent job or decent housing. but to never vote again? that’s just petty and vindictive, not just. These people, whatever their crime, hav paid their debt to society.
You shouldn't lose it in jail either. The worst people are still part of society and deserve the right to vote.
I hadn’t really considered that, however I could see a convincing argument being made for that… such as:
people are incarcerated not only as a punitive measure (which I disagree with; prison should be rehabilitative and to serve to protect society form dangerous criminals, not simply to punish). doing incarceration, certain rights are severely curtailed to this end, but what purpose does it serve to suspend the right to vote other to disenfranchise what are primarily people of color? when this result is highlighted (ad the majority of this who advocate for this right to be withheld also happen to hate PoC) the dots are easy to connect.
The purpose is to disenfranchise black people, because racism. But even without the racism they are still.part of society and deserve the right to vote.
There is one complaint that they will skew local elections when jails are in remote areas, but that can be solved by having their residence match whatever it was at the time of their incarceration.
it could also be solved by jailing fewer people and for shorter periods of time…
While that should also happen, it wouldn't solve losing the ability to vote forever on a conviction.
oh, I know— it’s the last ass-fucking on the prison pipeline— and why it’s so important that people who have paid their debt to society get their lives back afterward.
Here in Brazil, people can vote while still in jail serving sentence. On top of that, asking any job candidate for their criminal records is illegal, unless the job is on a financial institution, like a bank. Third parties (like an HR department) can't access criminal records due to privacy protections contained in out constitution and laws.
Man, the Brazilian constitution of 1988 is such an amazing document. More countries should have modern constitutions!