Supreme Court Rejects Felon Voting Rights Case

In 2000, Massachusetts stripped convicted felons of the right to vote. In response, a small group of inmates filed suit against the state, claiming that the new law was a violation of the Voting Rights Act. That case swam about in the waters of the court system for years, until this week when the U.S Supreme Court declined to hear the case and effectively killed it.

It's a sad turn of events, though not entirely unexpected. Federal appeals courts are currently split on the issue of whether the Voting Rights Act can be applied to felon disenfranchisement, but that conflict has not been simmering overly long so it's no great surprise that the high court chose to leave it on the flame a bit longer. When they do take up the issue, we'll revisit.

But in the meantime, I'd like to touch on this case's back story.

It all started in the late nineties. Massachusetts was one of only three states to allow incarcerated felons to vote (the other two were Maine and Vermont) and politically active prisoners decided to take advantage of that right. They formed a Political Action Committee, and set their minds to using the electoral system to reform the criminal justice system.

It was a fascinating turn of events and a laudable commitment to the political system as far as I'm concerned, but the commonwealth's non-incarcerated citizens did not agree. Rather than congratulating the inmates for their civic mindedness, the state held a referendum to strip them of their voting rights. It passed with an overwhelming majority. Thus was born the lawsuit that just died.

We tend to think of the movement to strike felon disenfranchisement laws as a progressive one, a bold strike to carve out new rights for the currently or formerly incarcerated. But in this case the lawsuit in question was a conservative move, a holding action, an attempt to keep things as they were. And it makes opponents to felon enfranchisement in Massachusetts seem that much more unreasonable. After all, opposing a conservative measure requires answering the question, "What's wrong with the way things are?" And it's hard to claim with a straight that Massachusetts' prisons were disrupting the political system before they lost the right to vote only a decade ago.

Photo Credit: A. Strakey