Mississippi lifetime voting ban struck down by 5th Circuit

A federal appeals court ruled Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for those convicted of certain felonies is unconstitutional, overturning a 19th-century law.

A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the ban is considered “cruel and unusual punishment.”

“In the last fifty years, a national consensus has emerged among the state legislatures against permanently disenfranchising those who have satisfied their judicially imposed sentences and thus repaid their debts to society. … Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement,” the ruling states.

The Mississippi law says anyone convicted of bribery, theft, arson, perjury, forgery, embezzlement or bigamy could never have their voting right reinstated.

The nonprofit Sentencing Project found that Mississippi has one of the country’s most strict disenfranchisement laws, impacting about 11 percent of all otherwise eligible voters. That is the highest proportion of any state.

The disenfranchisement provision “serves no legitimate penological purpose,” the opinion reads.

“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,” it continues.

The law was passed in 1890 as part of early Jim Crow provisions attempting to disenfranchise and limit the rights of Black residents.

“The right to vote is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy,” attorney Jon Youngwood, who argued the case, said. “This is a major victory for Mississippians who have completed their sentences and deserve to participate fully in our political process.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center also pursued the lawsuit, representing those who were disenfranchised by the law.

“Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution lifetime disenfranchisement scheme disproportionately impacted Black Mississippians,” SPLC attorney Ahmed Soussi said in a statement. “We applaud the court for reversing this cruel and harmful practice and restoring the right to vote to tens of thousands of people who have completed their sentences.”

The case also attracted the support of legal aid nonprofits, including the Legal Defense Fund, which submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs in December.

“Section 241 is Jim Crow law, which created a deliberate and invidious scheme to disenfranchise Black people,” Legal Defense Fund attorney Patricia Okonta said in December.

“Today, Black Mississippians continue to be disproportionately harmed by this provision. While the state is home to the highest percentage of Black Americans of any state in the country, it has not elected a Black person to statewide office since 1890,” she continued.

The state now has the opportunity to appeal the ruling to the entire 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court.