JACKSON, Madam. — Mississippi’s legislature, not the courts, must decide whether the state’s practice of the deprivation of voting rights of people convicted of certain crimes, including nonviolent offenses such as forgery and timber theft, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
A majority of the justices of the 5th Court of Appeals wrote that the Supreme Court in 1974 had upheld constitutional law allowing states to disenfranchise convicts.
“Do the hard work of convincing your fellow citizens that the law must change,” the majority wrote.
Nineteen appeals court judges heard arguments in January, months after they overturned a ruling last August by a three-judge panel of the same court. The panel had said that Mississippi’s voting ban after certain crimes, this violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
In Thursday’s ruling, justices dissenting from the ruling wrote that the majority had stretched the Supreme Court’s earlier decision “beyond recognition.” The dissenting justices wrote that Mississippi’s practice of disenfranchising people who have completed their sentences is cruel and unusual.
Tens of thousands of Mississippi residents are expropriated under a section of the state constitution that says those convicted of 10 specific crimes, including bribery, theft and arson, lose the right to vote. Under a previous state attorney general, who was a Democrat, the list was expanded to 22 crimes, including timber theft — cutting down and stealing trees from someone else’s property — and carjacking.
To restore their right to vote, people convicted of one of the crimes must either obtain a pardon from the governor, which rarely happens, or convince lawmakers to pass individual bills specifically for them with two-thirds approval. Lawmakers have passed few such bills in recent years. They have passed 17 this year and none in 2023.
In March, a Mississippi Senate committee leader said a proposal killed that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights five years after someone is convicted or released from prison for certain nonviolent crimes. The bill passed the Republican-controlled House 99-9, but Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill said she blocked it because “we already have a number of processes in place” to restore voting rights on a person-by-person basis.
Mississippi’s original list of disenfranchisement crimes comes from the Jim Crow eraAttorneys challenging the list argue that the framers of the state constitution revoked voting rights for crimes they believed black people were more likely to commit.
In 1950, Mississippi removed burglary from its list of criminal offenses. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi’s criminal offenses.
Attorneys representing the state in a lawsuit argued that the 1950 and 1968 changes “removed any discriminatory stain.” The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2022, and the Supreme Court said in June 2023 that it would not review the appeals court’s decision.
The 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative appellate courts. It is based in New Orleans and hears cases from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Of the 19 judges who heard arguments in January, 17 were active and full-time, and two had senior status with limited workloads and responsibilities.
The majority opinion was written by Judge Edith Jones, who was nominated by former Republican President Ronald Reagan and is still serving. The ruling was approved by the 11 other serving judges, who were appointed by GOP presidents. A nominee of Democratic President Joe Biden, Judge Irma Ramirez, voted with the majority to overturn the panel’s earlier decision.
The dissent was written by Judge James Dennis, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton and is now a senior judge. He was joined by Senior Judge Carolyn Dineen King, nominated by former President Jimmy Carter, and five other Democratic nominees who are actively serving on the court.
Dennis, King and Jones made up the three-member panel whose decision was overturned 2-1.
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Kevin McGill reported from New Orleans.
