Court Upholds Mississippi’s Jim Crow-Era Lifetime Voting Ban

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld Mississippi’s exceptionally harsh practice of banning tens of thousands of residents with felony convictions from voting for life. The decision, delivered by the full Fifth Circuit, one of the nation’s most conservative federal appeals courts, overturns a shock ruling by a three-judge panel last year that had struck down the state’s disenfranchisement schemes. Barring people from voting permanently, those judges said, is unconstitutional because it’s a “cruel and unusual punishment.” Alex Burness, Bolts Magazine. 

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