On February 13, 2019, the Southern District of Mississippi granted class certification in a suit challenging Mississippi’s outdated criminal disenfranchisement scheme on constitutional grounds. Mississippi imposes a lifetime voting ban on individuals convicted of a wide variety of offenses, including crimes such as writing a bad check. 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, and seeks restoration of voting rights on behalf of a class of disenfranchised persons who have completed their sentences. 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.
In its decision, the Court rejected the Mississippi Secretary of State’s argument that class certification should be denied under the so-called “necessity doctrine,” which defendants in civil rights cases have raised to argue that class certification should be denied as unnecessary when plaintiffs seek solely declaratory or injunctive relief. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P.A. v. Allstate Insurance Co., the Court found that the necessity doctrine has no basis in the text of Rule 23, and that plaintiffs are therefore entitled to class certification whenever Rule 23’s enumerated requirements are satisfied.
The Court also rejected the Mississippi Secretary of State’s effort to limit the class to individuals who have not only completed their sentences, but have also fully paid all fines and restitution. The Court instead agreed that the class should include all disenfranchised individuals in Mississippi who have completed the term of incarceration, supervised release, parole and/or probation for any disenfranchising conviction—as set forth in Plaintiffs’ proposed class definition.
The decision was covered 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, Bloomberg Law (subscription required) and Mississippi Today.
The Simpson Thacher team includes Jonathan Youngwood, Janet Gochman, Nihara Choudhri, Isaac Rethy, Tyler Anger, Tyler Perry and Emily Hogan.