The Supreme Court Has Decided to Keep Mississippi’s Law That Prevents Certain People With Criminal Convictions From Voting

Washington — On Monday, the Supreme Court decided to keep Mississippi’s old rule that takes away voting rights from people who have been guilty of some felonies, even for nonviolent crimes like forgery and timber theft.

The justices decided not to consider an appeal from Mississippi residents who finished their terms but still can’t vote.

The court decided to keep a decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which stated that permanently losing voting rights does not count as cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution. The 5th Circuit said that Mississippi lawmakers, not the courts, need to decide if the rules should be changed.

In 2023, lawyers tried various legal arguments to get the Supreme Court to address the problem of felon disenfranchisement, but they were unsuccessful. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with the support of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, disagreed with this decision. Jackson stated that Mississippi’s list of acts that disqualify people was created to unfairly discriminate.

No judge disagreed with the order from Monday.

Most of the people affected lose their voting rights for life because the state offers very few ways to get them back. The lawyers in this case claimed that the state’s ban on voting is unusual and comes from a time of segregation.

The lawyers claimed that the creators of the state’s 1890 constitution used a list of crimes that they believed Black people were more likely to commit to justify denying them the right to vote. The state said that the Supreme Court has already stated that states can decide not to take away the right to vote from people with felony convictions.

About 38% of the people in Mississippi are Black. From 1994 to 2017, almost 50,000 people lost their right to vote because of a state law that prevents felons from voting. Over 29,000 people have finished their sentences, and around 58% of them are Black, according to an expert who studied statistics for those opposing the voting ban.

In Mississippi, if someone has been accused of a crime that takes away their voting rights, they can get their rights back by getting a pardon from the governor or by getting approval from two-thirds of the state House and Senate. In recent years, lawmakers have given voting rights back to only a small number of people.