A group of Mississippians who were stripped of their voting rights is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike a provision of the state Constitution that allows denial of suffrage to people convicted of some felonies.
The Mississippi residents, through attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center and private law firm Simpson Thacher and Bartlett, filed an appeal Friday with the nation’s highest court. They argue that the provision of the state Constitution that strips voting rights for life violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Jonathan Youngwood, global co-chair of Simpson Thacher’s litigation department, told Mississippi Today in a statement that after filing the petition with the Court, he remains confident in the case, and the firm’s clients remain committed to ensuring their right to vote is restored.
“The right to vote is an important cornerstone of democracy and denying broad groups of citizens, such as those who have completed their sentences for criminal convictions, deserve the full right of participating in our representative government,” Youngwood said.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of a list of 10 felonies lose their voting rights for life. Opinions from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office have since expanded the list of disenfranchising felonies to 24.
The practice of stripping voting rights away from people for life is a holdover from the Jim Crow-era. The framers of the 1890 Constitution believed Black people were most likely to commit those crimes.
About 55,000 names are on the Secretary of State’s voter disenfranchisement list as of March 19. The list, provided to Mississippi Today and the Marshall Project-Jackson through a public records request, goes back to 1992 for felony convictions in state court.
The only way for someone to have their suffrage restored is to convince lawmakers to restore it, but the process is arduous. It necessitates a two-thirds majority vote in both legislative chambers, the highest vote threshold in the state Capitol.
Governors can restore suffrage through issuing pardons, but no governor has issued one since the waning days of Gov. Haley Barbour’s administration in 2012.
In August, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, agreed with the plaintiffs and found that the lifetime voting ban violates the U.S. Constitution. But the full court, known for its conservative rulings, overturned the decision of the three-judge panel.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office is defending the state in the appeal, and it has not yet responded to the plaintiff’s petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s unclear when the Court will issue a ruling on the petition.
While the litigation is pending, state lawmakers have attempted to reform the state’s felony suffrage process.
The GOP-controlled house last year passed a bipartisan proposal to automatically restore suffrage to people convicted of nonviolent disenfranchising felonies after they’ve completed the terms of their sentence.
The legislation, however, died in the 52-member Senate because Senate Constitution Chairwoman Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, declined to bring the bill up for a vote before a deadline. House leadership is expected to address the issue again during its 2025 session.
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