{"id":1624101,"date":"2022-08-27T09:48:06","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T13:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1624101"},"modified":"2022-08-27T09:48:17","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T13:48:17","slug":"federal-appeals-court-upholds-mississippi-law-that-restricts-certain-felons-from-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/federal-appeals-court-upholds-mississippi-law-that-restricts-certain-felons-from-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Appeals Court Upholds Mississippi Law That Restricts Certain Felons From Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffederal-appeals-court-upholds-mississippi-law-that-restricts-certain-felons-from-voting%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1624101&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A federal appeals court upheld a law in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-mississippi\">Mississippi<\/a> that bars certain convicted felons from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-voting\">voting<\/a> in the state.<\/p>\n<p>The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 10\u20137 decision on Aug. 24 to uphold the law after the Mississippi Center for Justice sued on behalf of two black men in the state.<\/p>\n<p>The attorney for the men argued that Section 241 of the\u00a0Mississippi Constitution, which lays out the prerequisites to be eligible to vote in the state, violates the\u00a014th Amendment\u2019s equal protection clause.<\/p>\n<p>The black men\u2014Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem\u2014had lost their right to vote after they were convicted of two of the eight felonies that were included in Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution when it was first created in 1890, which restricts voting based on such felonies. Harness was convicted of forgery, and Karriem was convicted of embezzlement.<\/p>\n<p>Their attorney,\u00a0Donald B. Verrilli Jr., argued in September 2021 that authors of Mississippi\u2019s 1890 Constitution had racist intent when they included the eight felonies on the list, alleging that the crimes on the list were chosen because they thought those would be more likely to be committed by black people. He argued that the voting restriction based on the eight felonies should be ruled unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>The current version of Section 241 says that a person who \u201chas never been convicted of murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement or bigamy,\u201d among other requirements, is qualified to be an elector in the state. The felonies of rape and murder had been added to Section 241 in an amendment in 1968.<\/p>\n<h2>Revised Through Amendments<\/h2>\n<p>Attorneys representing the state of Mississippi said that the amendments over the years, which also included dropping burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes in 1950, \u201ccured any discriminatory taint on the original provision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the case, the plaintiffs did not challenge the disenfranchisement of people convicted of murder or rape.<\/p>\n<p>The majority opinion said that \u201cIt is uncontroverted that the state constitutional convention was steeped in racism and that \u2018the state was motivated by a desire to discriminate against blacks\u2019 when the 1890 constitution was adopted,\u201d but that the \u201cplaintiffs failed to meet their burden of showing that the current version of Section 241 was motivated by discriminatory intent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn addition, Mississippi has conclusively shown that any taint associated with Section 241 has been cured,\u201d the judges noted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter careful consideration of the record and applicable precedents, we reconfirm that Section 241 in its current form does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A dissent from\u00a0Judge James Graves said that the 1890 provision \u201cwas expressly aimed at preventing Black Mississippians from voting\u201d and that the majority had upheld the provision by concluding \u201cthat a virtually all-white electorate and<br \/>legislature, otherwise engaged in massive and violent resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, \u2018cleansed\u2019 that provision in 1968.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Supreme Court Appeal<\/h2>\n<p>Attorney Rob McDuff, with the\u00a0Mississippi Center for Justice, which had brought the lawsuit, said the center will seek for the ruling to be overturned via a request to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis provision was a part of the 1890 plan to take the vote away from Black people who had attained it in the wake of the civil war,\u201d McDuff, who is the director of the Impact Litigation Project at the center, said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/mscenterforjustice.org\/federal-court-of-appeals-upholds-mississippis-1890-felon-disfranchisement-law\/\">statement<\/a>. \u201cUnfortunately, the Court of Appeals is allowing it to remain in place despite its racist origins. Despite this setback, we will continue this battle and seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-63 Component-p-0-2-54\">To regain voting rights in Mississippi, a person convicted of a disenfranchising crime must receive a governor\u2019s pardon or must win permission from two-thirds of the state House and Senate. Legislators in recent years have passed a small number of bills to restore voting rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-63 Component-p-0-2-54\">Federal lawsuits were filed in Mississippi in 2017 and 2018 seeking automatic restoration of voting rights for people who had finished serving sentences for disenfranchising crimes. The case decided on Aug. 24 is from the lawsuit filed in 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-63 Component-p-0-2-54\">A panel of 5th Circuit judges\u00a0heard arguments in December 2019\u00a0from the other case, which makes different arguments. That panel has not issued a ruling.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-mimi-nguyen-ly\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Mimi Nguyen Ly covers world news with a focus on U.S. news. Contact her at mimi.nl@epochtimes.com<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal appeals court upheld a law in Mississippi that bars certain convicted felons from voting in the state.The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 10\u20137 decision on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1624101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1624101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1624101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1624101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1624101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}