Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo
Federal appeals court: Mississippi can strip voting rights from 10% of its citizens
Taylor Vance, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo
Thu, August 25, 2022 at 2:16 AM·3 min read
Aug. 24—JACKSON — The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Mississippi can continue to bar more than 10% of its citizens from voting.
On Wednesday, the 17-member federal court ruled upheld a Jim Crow-era provision that bars Mississippians convicted of felonies — roughly 10% of the population — from taking part in elections.
Framers of Mississippi's 1890 Constitution said the law was designed to prevent Black citizens from voting by targeting crimes they were believed to commit.
Two men filed a lawsuit against the state in 2017, challenging the section of the Mississippi Constitution that prevents people from voting if they've committed certain felonies. The plaintiffs argued the constitutional provision was steeped in white supremacy.
While most of the judges agreed that the Legislature had racial animus toward Black citizens when it created a Constitution in 1890, they argued state lawmakers eventually removed racial bias from the provision when they removed burglary form the list of felonies in 1950 and when they added rape and murder to the list 1968.
"Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of showing that the current version of Section 241 was motivated by discriminatory intent," the court wrote in its majority opinion. "In addition, Mississippi has conclusively shown that any taint associated with Section 241 has been cured."
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs said they intend to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
The Mississippi's 1890 Constitution, which still governs the state's laws, strips voting rights from people convicted of any of a list 10 felonies, including forgery and bigamy. The Mississippi Attorney General issued an opinion in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny, carjacking and felony-level bad check writing.
Judge James Graves, a native of Mississippi, dissented from the majority. Graves argued that the majority's logic is flawed because the Legislature, when it amended the provision in 1968, was virtually all-white and resistant to the Civil Rights movement.
"Handed an opportunity to right a 130-year-old wrong, the majority instead upholds it," Graves wrote. "I respectfully dissent."
Mississippi denies suffrage rights to a higher percentage of its residents than any other state in the country. In Mississippi, 235,150 people — or 10.6% of the state's voting age population — have lost their rights to vote, according to The Sentencing Project.
"For far too long, we as a nation have willfully deprived Black people of their right to vote — with Mississippi frequently leading the way," said Vangela Wade, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which represented the plaintiffs in the suit. "This ruling doubles down on this legacy. Access to democracy should not hinge on outdated laws designed to prevent people from voting based on the color of their skin."
Opponents of constitutional provisions for years have pointed out what they view as the hypocritical nature of how the constitutional provision is realistically applied in the criminal justice system. A person convicted of distributing child pornography, for example, can continue to vote in Mississippi's elections. But a person convicted of writing a bad check can have their voting rights taken away for life.
A person convicted of a disenfranchising felony can have their suffrage restored by either receiving permission from two-thirds of both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature or getting a pardon from the governor. Both of these scenarios have been historically rare.
State Rep. Nick Bain, R-Corinth, attempted to lead the way this year to reform the suffrage restoration process by clarifying that people who have had certain felonies removed from their criminal record could be allowed to vote again.
Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed that bill.
For “the good whites brehs”
brehs
They are either complicit or inept.