Supreme Court Maintains Mississippi Ban on Felons Voting

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to Mississippi's lifetime ban on voting by people convicted of a wide range of felonies, a policy adopted in 1890 during the Jim Crow era that stands as one of the toughest such restrictions in the nation.

The justices turned away an appeal of a lower court's decision rejecting a lawsuit that claimed that the ban — a provision of the Mississippi Constitution that applies even after a sentence has been completed — violates the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment promise of equal protection and Eighth Amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment.

The class action suit was brought in 2018 by six Mississippi men — including White and Black plaintiffs — who lost the right to vote even though they have completed their sentences for various felonies, including grand larceny and receiving stolen property.

The case centers on Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution, which denies people who have been convicted of a range of felonies the right to vote for life. The range of crimes include murder, rape, bribery, theft, forgery and arson, but lawyers for the plaintiffs have said it applies regardless of the seriousness of the felony, even "writing a bad check for $100 or stealing $250 worth of timber."

More than 58% of disenfranchised Mississippi residents who have completed their sentences are Black, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs, adding that Mississippi and Virginia are the only states that continue to "permanently disenfranchise first-time offenders who were convicted of nonviolent and nonvoting-related felonies."

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Mississippi, in 2023 ruled 2-1 in favor of the claim by the plaintiffs that the ban violates the Eighth Amendment.

A convicted felon's voting rights can be restored in Mississippi only by a two-thirds vote of the state Legislature — something that happened just 18 times between 2013 and 2018, according to the plaintiffs, or a pardon by the governor.