On March 27, 2018, the Firm, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), filed a federal class action lawsuit in Mississippi challenging the state’s outdated criminal disenfranchisement scheme on constitutional grounds. Mississippi imposes a lifetime voting ban on individuals convicted of many offenses, such as writing a bad check. Only the governor or the state legislature can restore a disenfranchised citizen’s voting rights. In the last five years, the legislature has restored voting rights to just 14 Mississippi citizens.
The lawsuit claims that Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit also claims that Mississippi’s standardless legislative process for restoring voting rights violates both the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment.
The Simpson Thacher team was featured in a “Shout-Out” in The AmLaw Litigation Daily, click here (subscription required) to read the article. The case has also received extensive media coverage by the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, The Clarion Ledger, Mississippi Today, Jackson Free Press, and The Seattle Times, as well as broadcast coverage by local affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox.
The Simpson Thacher team includes Jonathan Youngwood, Janet Gochman, Nihara Choudhri, Isaac Rethy and Tyler Anger.