Mississippi’s permanent felony voter ban returns to court
Petitions for the Week
Felony disenfranchisement has a long, and often racist, history. Section 241 is no exception. The provision, which permanently bans anyone convicted of any listed felony from being able to vote, was amended in the 1890s to remove crimes that were more often committed by White residents and add crimes more commonly committed Black residents. Two years ago, the court dismissed an earlier challenge to this provision. A group of Black state residents who had permanently lost their right to vote after being convicted of felonies listed in the provision argued that the 1890 amendment’s intent to discriminate against Black people, coupled with the provision’s continued emphasis today on crimes that disproportionately disenfranchise Black Mississippi residents, violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection, which prohibits the government from treating people differently without a good reason.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, criticized the court for refusing to take up the case the day after it struck down affirmative action in higher education.
Meanwhile, a second group of Black Mississippi residents who permanently lost their right to vote brought another challenge to the provision. They argued, in addition to claiming it violates 14th Amendment prohibitions on cruel and unjust punishments, that permanently stripping people from their right to vote is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. A three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, reversed this decision in part. The court of appeals, although it also rejected the 14th Amendment claim in its entirety, agreed that it violated the Eighth Amendment because it disproportionately hurts Black residents, and it defies the “evolving standards” of decency. The Supreme Court’s opinion of 1974, which approved felony disenfranchisement, ruled that states could generally bar people convicted for crimes from voting. The 5th Circuit concluded that it would be absurd for the 14th Amendment, which allows felony disenfranchisement, to allow it while the Eighth Amendment prohibits it. In any case, the court of appellations ruled Mississippi’s permanent ban on voting did not meet the high standard to violate the latter. The challengers argue that the 14th Amendment prohibits states from permanently barring people convicted of felonies to vote. It only applies to states in which voting is “denied” or “in any way abridged,” they say, and “abridged,” according to them, means a temporary loss. The challengers therefore ask the justices to “revisit” the court’s 1974 ruling, and clarify that permanent felony disenfranchisement is not only inconsistent with the 14th Amendment, but amounts to cruel and unusual punishment proscribed by the Eighth Amendment.
A list of this week’s featured petitions is below:
United States Postal Service v. Konan
24-351
Issue
: Whether a plaintiff’s claim that she and her tenants did not receive mail because U.S. Postal Service employees intentionally did not deliver it to a designated address arises out of “the loss” or “miscarriage” of letters or postal matter under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Hittle v. City of Stockton, California
24-427
Issues
: (1) Whether this court should overrule McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green; and (2) whether step three of the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework requires a plaintiff to disprove the employer’s proffered reason for the adverse employment action, when the text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Bostock v. Clayton County provide that an action may have more than one but-for cause or motivating factor.
Berk v. Choy
24-440
Issue: Whether a state law providing that a complaint must be dismissed unless it is accompanied by an expert affidavit may be applied in federal court.
Peterson v. Doe
24-449
Issue: Whether Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which preserves the traditional practice of excluding biological males from girls’ and women’s sports teams and competitions, violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Konan v. United States Postal Service
24-495
Issues: (1) Whether federal employees can be liable under the Ku Klux Klan Act; and (2) whether or under what circumstances the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine — which holds that employees of the same entity cannot be liable for conspiracy — applies to the act.
Hopkins v. Watson
24-560
Issues: (1) Whether Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution’s lifetime disenfranchisement of individuals who have completed their sentences for past felony convictions violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment; and (2) whether Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s “affirmative sanction” for and safe harbor from strict scrutiny review applies only to laws that temporarily abridge the right to vote based on “participation in rebellion, or other crime,” and not to laws like Section 241 that permanently deny the right to vote to individuals who have completed their sentences for past felony convictions.
