Section 241 of the 1890 Mississippi constitution strips voting rights for life from citizens convicted of any of 23 felonies, even after they've completed their sentence.
One of only a few states nationally to carry such a law, Mississippi's rate of citizens barred from voting is more than three times the national average.
Attorneys at the SPLC representing a class of plaintiffs say that's cruel and unusual punishment and in violation of the 8th amendment, and filed suit originally in 2018 seeking to have the law struck down on those grounds.
A person can have their voting rights restored either by action of the governor or two-thirds of the legislature, but those instances are few and far between.
In early August, in an at times scathing ruling, senior 5th Circuit Court judges James Dennis and Carolyn Dineen King said Mississippi “stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear and consistent trend in our Nation against permanent disenfranchisement,” and that keeping the law on the books “ensures they will never be fully rehabilitated… and serves no protective function to society.”
But shortly after that ruling was released, the state of Mississippi – under the purview of the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch – filed an appeal and requested the constitutionality of the law be considered by the full court.
Comprised in its full strength of 19 justices, the Fifth Circuit is often considered one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country.
Solicitor general Scott Stewart represented the state of Mississippi before the full court, and argued the law should remain because it does not represent a punishment at all.
“We’ve cited cases going back well over a century that recognize that, in our country’s tradition, felon disenfranchisement is not a punishment. It does not serve the ends of punishment such as deterrence or retribution,” Stewart said. “It has a non-penal aim of regulating who is fit to be involved with making our laws, which is a very serious subject.”
Jonathan Youngwood, co-counsel representing the plaintiffs and Global Co-Chair of litigation at law firm Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, says the law is out of step with current standards across the country and detrimental to a functioning democracy.
“When you have a law that takes away that right from – in the state of Mississippi – tens of thousands of people, for their entire life and there is effectively nothing they can do to regain it, you are removing tens of thousands of citizens from the core basis of the democratic society that we live in,” Youngwood told MPB News.
“You are telling them that because they committed a crime when they were young – and perhaps not a significant crime – even though the rest of their sentence is completed and they have no parole obligation, they still cannot be full members of society. You hurt democracy and you hurt society.”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, nearly 50,000 Mississippians had that right stripped from them for life between 1994 and 2017.
A representative at the Fifth Circuit was not able to provide a date on when the ruling is expected.
