Democracy Alerts – U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Review Mississippis Jim Crow-Era Felony Suffrage Policy

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WASHINGTON, DC On Friday, June 30, the United States Supreme Court denied a motion to review Mississippis’ strict disenfranchisement provision (Section 241) that was enshrined in the state’s 1890 constitution . The 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld the constitutionality of the state’s disenfranchisement scheme in August 2022.

In 2017, people with previous felony convictions filed a lawsuit challenging Section 241.

The Jim Crow-era provision of the Mississippi Constitution at issue in the petition that disenfranchises anyone convicted of bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or property under false pretenses, perjury, forgery, embezzlement or bigamy was originally challenged in a consolidated lawsuit, Harness v. Watson. The lawsuit was brought by people with prior felony convictions who alleged that the impugned provision was constructed and enacted with the intent to discriminate against black voters and prevent them from exercising their right to vote in violation of the 14th Amendment. of the American Constitution.

Notably, the constitutional provision was amended by the Mississippi legislature in 1950 to remove burglary and again in 1968 to add rape and murder as disenfranchising crimes. While the plaintiffs did not challenge the provision’s rape and murder amendment, they argued that the various other crimes that remained in Section 241 since 1890 are tainted by racial animosity and continue to deprive disproportionately African Americans of their rights to this day.

In 2019 a trial court upheld Section 241 and in 2022 the 5th Circuit upheld.

In September 2019, a district court upheld the amended version of Section 241, saying the provision, as amended in the 1950s and 1960s, was passed without racial motivation. The plaintiffs appealed that decision to the 5th Circuit and a three-judge panel upheld the district courts’ decision. In June 2021, the 5th Circuit granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a rehearing en banc, meaning the full roster of 5th Circuit judges agreed to reconsider the previous decision of the three-judge panels.

In an unsigned majority opinion released August 24, 2022, the 5th Circuit’s en banc majority upheld the panels’ earlier decision, once again concluding that Section 241 does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In the notice, the majority found that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that Section 241 was motivated by discriminatory or racial intent and that Mississippi had demonstrated conclusively that any taint associated with Section 241 had been corrected by subsequent amendments.

Although the majority agreed that the original version of Section 241 was undoubtedly racially motivated, they argued that because the provision was amended in 1968 in a manner free from intentional racial discrimination, it was no longer in conflict with the equal protection clause.

Following the 5th Circuits decision, the plaintiffs appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

In October 2022, the plaintiffs appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to overturn the 5th Circuit’s patently wrong decision and declare that Section 241 violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. American. In their petition for certiorari, the petitioners pointed out that the 5th Circuit erred in its decision, finding that the amendments to Section 241 cleaned the provision of its racial taint. On the contrary, the petitioners noted that when Mississippians voted on the amendments to Section 241, they had no opportunity to comment on whether the many other disqualifying crimes originally enacted in 1890 should be re-enacted or removed from the state constitution.

Further, the petitioners point to the majority’s ahistorical assessment of these amendments: Nor does the historical context suggest that the elimination of the discriminatory aspect of the originally enacted section 241 was the object of any either of the amendments. Racial animosity in Mississippi did not end with the 1890 convention. It is textbook history that the 1950s and 1960s were a notorious period of opposition throughout the South to the advances of the movement of civil rights, nowhere more than in Mississippi.

Importantly, the petitioners pointed to the staggering and very tangible impact of Section 241 on black voters in particular: African Americans make up 36% of Mississippis’ voting-age population, but 59% of its people deprived of their rights. African-American adults are therefore 2.7 times more likely than white adults to have been convicted of a crime that disenfranchises them.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court’s denial of the motion means that Mississippis’ felony disenfranchisement provision remains on the books and will continue to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Mississippians.

In a powerful dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson explained why the Court missed yet another opportunity to learn from its mistakes.

In a serious dissent, Jackson criticized the court’s decision not to consider the case: the mere passage of time cannot insulate from constitutional challenge a law that was abhorrent when it was created. In sum, I would have granted this motion to correct the Fifth Circuits which are constitutionally clear and fundamental errors.

Jackson concluded: So as the Court sets out to slay other giants, Mississippians can only hope they won’t have to wait another century for a judicial knight-errant. Constitutional wrongs do not correct themselves. Through its inaction, the Court missed another opportunity to learn from its mistakes.

Read the order denying the petition here.

Learn more about the case here.

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