Column: SC refuses MS challenge

Starting primarily in the 1950s, federal courts have stepped in to right the wrongs of Mississippi’s racist 1890 Constitution, but on June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court said those wrongs had been corrected over the years. 

The nation’s highest court announced its refusal to hear a case challenging the centuries-old Mississippi Constitution provision that imposes a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies. 

The provision, clear at the time in 1890, was enacted as a tool to keep Black Mississippians from voting. 

At the time, the provision imposed a lifetime voting ban on a person convicted of bigamy or perjury but not murder or rape. 

The Mississippi Center for Justice and other groups filed a 2017 lawsuit on behalf of people who have lost their right to vote.

In landmark cases, federal courts have struck down other Mississippi constitutional provisions designed to keep African Americans from voting, such as the poll tax and so-called literacy tests. The Supreme Court did not give a reason for the refusal to hear the felony suffrage case. 

In 2022, a majority of the U.S. 5th Court of Appeals ruled the provision was not unconstitutional because “the racial taint” from 1890 had been removed by actions taken in the 1950s and 1960s by the Mississippi Legislature, which added murder and rape as disenfranchising crimes. 

The changes removed the racial taint, the judicial majority ruled.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown disagreed with the majority decision. She questioned whether the racial taint had been removed. 

“Constitutional wrongs do not right themselves,” she wrote.

Those who say the racial taint had been removed would have a stronger argument if the Legislature had allowed voters to decide if they want to maintain the provision banning people from voting for life. More than 40 states do not have lifetime bans on voting. (Mississippi Today news analysis column by Bobby Harrison) 07/16/23) U.S. Supreme Court ends efforts to right wrongs of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution - Mississippi Today