Court says Jim Crow-era felony voting ban in Mississippi can be altered by lawmakers, not judges

Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court has ruled that Mississippi legislators, not the courts, must decide whether to change the state’s practice of stripping voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies. The list of disenfranchising crimes includes nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft. The state’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who challenged the list say authors of the Mississippi Constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit. In Thursday’s majority opinion, judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Supreme Court in 1974 reaffirmed constitutional law allowing states to disenfranchise felons.