Appeals Court Upholds Mississippi Lifetime Voting Ban for Some Felony Convictions

A voter casts her ballot at a polling place at Highland Colony Baptist Church in Ridgeland, Miss., on Nov. 27, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A federal appeals court has upheld Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for individuals with certain felony convictions, saying that the question of restoring their voting rights is a decision for state legislators, not the courts.

In a full-bench opinion delivered on July 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit ruled 13–6 to affirm that it is constitutional for states to disenfranchise some voters over felony convictions.

At the center of the legal dispute is Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution, which lays out 10 specific felony crimes that permanently bar a convicted offender from voting, ranging from murder and bribery to theft and arson. The voting rights may be restored, but only if one receives a gubernatorial pardon or the approval of a two-thirds vote of both the state House and Senate.

“Laws like Mississippi’s Section 241 have faced many unsuccessful constitutional challenges in the past,” Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote for the court’s majority.

As an example, she pointed to a landmark 1974 case known as Richardson v. Ramirez, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled that California county election officials didn’t violate the Eighth Amendment when they refused to register some residents convicted of felonies to be voters.

“Do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change,” Circuit Judge Jones wrote. “The paramount lesson of the Constitution and Richardson is that the changes sought by Plaintiffs here can and must be achieved through public consensus effectuated in the legislative process, not by judicial fiat.”

She also sounded the alarm on the constitutional implications of striking down Section 241, warning that it would open the door for federal courts to “make legislative choices” at the state level.

Related Laws in Other States

The July 18 decision overturned a ruling from a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit about a year ago. That 2–1 ruling based its reasoning on the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, as well as a “national consensus” against lifetime voting bans.

As of 2024, a total of 10 states have laws stripping people convicted of felonies of their voting rights indefinitely, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming.

In 38 states, individuals automatically regain their voting rights either as soon as they complete their felony sentences or after a period of probation. In the District of Columbia, Maine, and Vermont, these individuals never lose their right to vote, even while they are incarcerated.

“Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement,” the majority wrote in the 2023 ruling.

The lawsuit, Hopkins v. Hosemann, was first filed in 2018 by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of six Mississippi citizens who were blocked from voting after serving their sentences.

“Between 1994 and 2017, nearly 50,000 Mississippians were banned for life from voting due to conviction of a disqualifying offense,” the SPLC said, adding that black, voting-age Mississippians had been disenfranchised at over twice the rate of their white counterparts.

The SPLC did not respond to requests for comment before publication.