The Supreme Court has turned down more than two dozen requests to rehear cases that were already decided by the high court, Newsweek reported. This remedy is available only within 25 days of the high court's decision and is rarely granted.
The Supreme Court has the final say on the nation's legal battles, but litigants may have a second crack at their cases if they disagree with the court's initial decision. However, the door has closed for almost 30 cases as the court published its list on Monday.
"The Supreme Court granting a rehearing is extremely rare. There are two possible forms of a rehearing," explained University of Houston professor Alex Badas, who specializes in judicial politics.
"One after the merits decision. One after a denial of certiorari. Both are very rare," Badas added.
There are specific instances that often warrant rehearing, though it's never guaranteed. According to Badas, a rehearing is warranted if the court subsequently "issued a merits decision in another decision that changes how the Justice view the case they just denied."
That means that if a new case comes up after the court issues a writ of certiorari in a similar instance, it may warrant another look at the issue. Other instances for rehearing include cases where the justices did not participate in deciding it for one reason or another.
In one case, Samuel Alito simply didn't rule on a decision, prompting the participants to request a new hearing. In another, the litigants argued that Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Brett Kavanaugh weren't part of the decision and, therefore, deserved a second consideration.
Sometimes, it's an entire slate of liberal or conservative judges who don't participate which triggers the rehearing request. This happened in Brunson v. Sotomayor, et al., where liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Jackson were named as defendants and therefore sat out the decision.
On the conservative side, Alito and Kavanaugh, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts, were named as defendants and therefore did not rule on a case that requested a rehearing. The request for rehearing was denied.
Among the cases decided this term were a pair that were quite consequential. Most notable was the court's decision on presidential immunity in Donald Trump v. United States, according to U.S. News & World Reports.
The court heard arguments from both sides about whether former President Donald Trump could be held accountable for the events of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot or whether presidential immunity applied. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court decided Trump had immunity but sent it back to the lower courts to decide exactly which actions that applied to.
In another case regarding Jan. 6, the court was asked to examine whether the government overreached when it charged upwards of 300 Trump supporters with "obstructing or impeding an official proceeding." The uprising took place against the backdrop of the certification of the 2020 presidential election that ended with Joe Biden becoming president.
The court's 6-3 decision found that the government didn't meet the threshold for charging rioters with obstruction, namely the destruction of documents, records, or objects used in the proceedings. Many of the Trump supporters charged with obstruction may now receive lighter sentences.
The Supreme Court is just as fallible as any other institution. There are remedies for the times when it decides incorrectly, but it's a difficult threshold to cross for the many who aren't pleased with the court's decisions.
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed paperwork with the appeals court in New York asking for the $500 million civil fraud verdict against him to be overturned because it is "egregious" and "erroneous."
Trump's main arguments against the huge civil penalty were that some of the allegations were past the statute of limitations, no one was harmed by Trump's actions, and that other businesses will leave the state if the huge fine is found to be legitimate.
The brief was 116 pages long, and among other points it made was that the verdict effectively gives Attorney General Letitia James "limitless power to target anyone she desires, including her self-described political opponents."
A lot of the arguments against Judge Arthur Engoron's judgment against Trump were similar to ones he presented during the trial, but that doesn't mean the appeals court won't find them valid. Trump's lawyers called the verdict "draconian" and said it "violates centuries of New York case law."
If the court determines that Engoron ignored valid grounds for dismissal, it could upend the entire verdict and James's gleeful threats to seize his property if he doesn't pay up.
Trump posted a bond of $175 million after no bond agency would give him the full amount. If he wins the appeal, he will get it all back.
Trump is on a roll with legal victories. The Supreme Court threw a major monkey wrench into the criminal indictments against him by declaring he has immunity for all official acts and some others.
The classified documents case against him was then dropped by Judge Aileen Cannon because she determined that Special Counsel Jack Smith was illegally appointed.
The Georgia election interference case has been postponed until after the election, and the sentencing for the New York falsified business documents case has been postponed until mid-September with the judge expressing doubt about whether it could even take place because of the immunity ruling.
These cases were trumped up by Democrat prosecutors in Democrat-dominated areas, and they're all falling apart under scrutiny by courts with actual legitimacy like the Supreme Court.
The whole idea was to make Trump look like a criminal so no one would want to vote for him in November, but that has backfired spectacularly and the majority are not buying any of it.
Oral arguments in this case that was intended to hurt him financially will be in September, although it's still New York and he may not have a great chance of a fair verdict here.
Some of Trump's arguments were already considered by the same court and rejected.
He may have to go to the Supreme Court yet again for relief.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the state of New York to answer to charges in a lawsuit filed by the state of Missouri that it is interfering in the presidential election.
It is accused of "illegally scheming" to jail President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for the 2024 election.
It is Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey who has brought the case, charging that, "New York is waging war on American Democracy – and Missouri will not let it stand."
The state is accused of an "illicit prosecution, gag order, and sentencing of President Trump" and the state is accused of deliberately undermining "his ability to campaign."
Such overt actions, the case complains, "sabotages Missourians' ability to cast a well-informed vote…"
Under the Constitution, such a claim of improper behavior made by one state against another goes directly to the Supreme Court.
Missouri's case asks that the Supreme Court determine New York illegally interfered with the election.
Trump was found guilty by a jury in leftist-Manhattan of business reporting violations in a trial rife with misbehavior.
The prosecutor took misdemeanors for which the statute of limitations had expired and claimed they were felonies because they were in furtherance of another, unspecified, crime. The judge's daughter was fundraising for Democrats off her father's courtroom decisions, and despite the appearance of conflict, he refused to exit the case.
The prosecution's chief witness was a convicted perjurer.
WND reported when the case was developing, Bailey explained, "We have to fight back against a rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail. It sabotages Missourians' right to a free and fair election."
The Western Journal reported Bailey explained, "Radical progressives in New York are trying to rig the 2024 election. We have to stand up and fight back."
"The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice," he said.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction that prevents the city of Castle Rock, Colorado, from interfering with a church's program to help the homeless by providing temporary shelter in an RV and a trailer camper unit on its own property.
The Rock Church had sued the town after officials there ordered church members to no longer help the homeless on their own church land, and the judge said that campaign created a substantial burden because it "prevents participation in a conduct motivated by a sincerely held religious belief."
A CBS report noted the Rock Church has sheltered homeless people in RVs on its land since 2019 but town officials blocked that ministry multiple times in 2021, 2022 and 2023 claiming it was a violation of zoning laws.
The church's legal action charged that city officials were violating the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act with their campaign.
The church's goals were clear, in its filing: "The Holy Bible specifically and repeatedly directs faithful Christians like the church's members to care for the poor and needy out of compassion and mercy for those who are experiencing significant misfortune and hardship."
U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico on Friday ruled that the town did violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law passed by Congress in 2000, which grants religious institutions protections from zoning laws that prohibit free exercise of religion.
The judge said in his order, "The church stresses that by preventing it from allowing the homeless to live on its property, the town is precluding the church from exercising its religious beliefs regardless of whether it might be possible to provide for the needy in some other way. There is no reason to second-guess the church at this point, regardless of how idiosyncratic or mistaken the town may find its beliefs to be."
He continued, "The town does not explicitly argue that it has a compelling interest in enforcing the (Planning Division) regulations as interpreted by the board of adjustment, and the church contends that the town could have no such interest because the church takes a number of precautions to ensure that its temporary shelter is safe. These include having a third party conduct background checks and requiring any RV tenants to sign contracts indicating that they will abide by certain rules."
Further, he said the town failed to identify any safety issues from the church's actions.
The report noted the church had has to turn away people who needed help because of Castle Rock's actions.
The judge noted the precedent he was following: "As the 10th Circuit has noted, a substantial burden exists for the purposes of RLUIPA where the government 'prevents participation in conduct motivated by a sincerely held religious belief.'"
Those beliefs are "supported by sworn affidavits," the judge said, which the town "does not ultimately dispute."
The judge said, "To hold otherwise would invite the sort of 'trolling through a person's … religious beliefs' and 'governmental monitoring or second-guessing' of 'religious beliefs and practices' that the 10th Circuit recently reiterated is forbidden by the First Amendment."
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday to order a new trial in a case where the lower court allowed closed-door meetings about whether to buy new voting machines from Dominion Voter Systems in 2020 and 2021.
The law allows closed-door executive meetings for three reasons: “To consider the purchase of property for public purposes, the sale of property at competitive bidding, or the sale or other disposition of unneeded, obsolete, or unfit-for-use property in accordance with (state law), if premature disclosure of information would give an unfair competitive or bargaining advantage to a person whose personal, private interest is adverse to the general public interest.”
The court said it used grammar to decide the ruling.
“We apply the ordinary rules of grammar – specifically, the rules of punctuation – to determine the plain meaning of (the ORC provisions on executive sessions),” Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy wrote in the opinion. “In doing so, we conclude that the premature-disclosure clause applies to all the permissible reasons listed in the provision for entering executive session.”
The appeals court had said the premature disclosure clause only applied to the third reason--the disposition of obsolete property.
With this new interpretation, the supreme court sent the case back down to the Stark County Court of Common Pleas to be looked at again.
The county did buy the machines after a judge in a separate lawsuit ordered them to.
The lawsuit was brought by Look Ahead America, a group in D.C. that has also advocated for January 6 defendants.
Dominion Voting Systems has been the target of accusations that its voting machines got President Joe Biden elected by allowing votes to be changed fraudulently.
Full disclosure, they won over $700 million dollars in a defamation lawsuit from Fox News, so at least one court felt they were maligned unfairly.
Other lawsuits are still pending.
But millions of Republicans still believe something is fishy there, and a lot of them would oppose their county buying new ones. Hence the secrecy--but that's not how local government is supposed to work.
Just because one party believes the other one is misinformed doesn't make it right for the other one to go behind their backs and do what they want anyway.
Time for a do-over--but how many more times are the courts going to have to correct these overreaching, tyrannical regimes before they change their ways? That's the question.
Republican groups across the country have fought to challenge mail-in voting laws as many believe the mail-in system was rampant with abuse in previous elections and opens up the possibility for further abuse in November.
While some efforts have succeeded, according to the New York Post, Republicans had a major setback in Nevada this week after an Obama-appointed judge tossed out a challenge to the state's mail-in ballot counting laws.
Plaintiffs in the latest challenge included "the Republican National Committee, the state GOP, the 2024 Trump campaign and Nevada voter Donald Szymanski."
They filed suit against "Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, Washoe County Registrar of Voters Cari-Ann Burgess, Washoe County Clerk Jan Galassini and Lorena Portillo and Lynn Marie Goya, respectively Clark County’s voter registrar and county clerk."
Federal District Court Chief Judge Miranda Du, an Obama-appointed judge, ruled that the plaintiffs in the case lacked standing to move forward with the lawsuit.
The NY Post noted:
In a 15-page ruling, Du, a 2011 Obama appointee to the federal bench, said none of the plaintiff’s claims demonstrates they “have suffered, or will likely suffer, an injury” if the ballot-counting measure is allowed to stand. The judge said “it does not necessarily follow that mail ballots arriving after Election Day will skew Democratic. And even if later-arriving mail ballots have favored Democrats past elections, it is far from guaranteed that Nevada voters will behave similarly this November.”
The federal judge decided that Republican voters would not be adversely affected by the mail-in ballot counting rules currently on the books.
"The Nevada mail ballot receipt deadline does not have an ‘individual and personal’ effect on the voting power of Republican voters; it neither undermines their access to the polls nor disproportionately diminishes the weight of their votes relative to other Nevada voters," Judge Du said in her ruling.
Activist judge, Miranda Du, ruled Nevada can keep counting ballots that show up after election day.
https://t.co/KJlMggecTo pic.twitter.com/JoG5NgNJ4w— Watching The Defectives (@shannon_alter) July 18, 2024
Republican groups have stepped up their legal efforts in Nevada, as they believe former President Donald Trump stands a very strong chance at winning the state in the upcoming election cycle.
Shortly after the ruling, GOP spokeswoman Claire Zunk revealed that an appeal was already in the works.
"Our case fights a Nevada law that shouldn’t be on the books; it breaks federal law and allows mail ballots to be counted after Election Day,” Zunk said.
She added, "Rather than letting us fight this in court, a liberal judge unjustifiably dismissed our case. Political parties must be allowed to fight invalid election laws that threaten the integrity of our elections. We are committed to protecting the ballot and we will pursue further legal action in this case."
Hopefully, the appeals process goes in the Republicans' favor.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
There's a Supreme Court precedent in Hill v. Colorado that comes out of that leftist and abortion-promoting state that cuts into the free speech rights of counselors who wish to persuade women not to abort their unborn children.
A case now has developed that allows a coalition of those counselors to ask the justices to reverse that agenda that appears to infringe on constitutionally backed freedoms.
A report from the Thomas More Society explains that pro-life advocates from Coalition Life, the "nation's largest professional sidewalk counseling organization," are requesting the high court's intervention in their case.
The petition for certiorari was filed on behalf of Coalition Life in the organization's fight with the city of Carbondale, Illinois.
Helping in the fight for the pro-life agenda is former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.
"For nearly a quarter of a century, sidewalk counselors like those who work with Coalition Life have been forced to live with 'an entirely separate, abridged edition of the First Amendment' when it comes to the kind of peaceful, conversational speech outside an abortion facility in which they wish to engage," Clement explained.
The case developed following 2023 when Carbondale, Illinois, adopted a "bubble zone" law that limits Americans' speech on a particular topic in a particular location.
The restriction applied to public sidewalks outside "hospitals, medical clinics, and healthcare facilities" to include Carbondale's three abortion businesses.
It was modeled on Colorado's earlier censorship scheme in Hill.
That lets governments ban "the peaceful life-affirming speech of pro-life advocates on public sidewalks. Since the Supreme Court's decision in Hill, similar laws aimed at chilling pro-life speech near abortion facilities have proliferated nationwide, especially in abortion-permissive municipalities, and states such as Montana and New Hampshire," the legal team explained.
The counselors sued Carbondale in March 2024, and a federal court opened the path to the Supreme Court by saying it could not rule against the Hill precedent.
The society's lawyers said, "Since the Supreme Court decided Hill in 2000, the case has come under fire for being out of step with the First Amendment and a prime example of the 'abortion distortion' factor in case law. The Supreme Court itself, in its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, singled out Hill as the leading example of the court's abortion precedents having 'distorted First Amendment doctrines'—suggesting its readiness to revisit the constitutionality of speech-restricting 'bubble zone' laws."
Carbondale has developed an abortion industry because of its proximity to nearby states with abortion restrictions.
"Now that the Supreme Court has returned the abortion debate to the people and their legislators, it is more important than ever to restore the free speech rights of those who advocate for life in the public square," explained Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive vice president.
"Hill v. Colorado was egregiously wrong on the day it was decided, and it remains a black mark in our law to this day. In the decades since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hill, the Court has steadily eroded Hill's shaky foundations in more recent First Amendment cases and, in the majority opinion which overturned Roe v. Wade, sounded the death knell for Hill's distortion of our bedrock First Amendment principles."
He said, "'Bubble zones,' like the one in Carbondale, are an unconstitutional and overzealous attempt to show favor to abortion businesses, at the expense of the free speech rights of folks who seek to offer information, alternatives, and resources to pregnant women in need. It's time to end, once and for all, the political gamesmanship places like Carbondale play with our free speech rights."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – In a move which surprised precisely nobody, the International Court of Justice in the Hague delivered a non-binding ruling Friday claiming Israel's rule in "the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967" is "illegal," and it is obligated to bring its "unlawful presence" in that territory to an end "as rapidly as possible."
As if Israel did not already have enough on its collective mind with a full-blown nine-month-long war with Hamas, as well as daily drone, rocket, and missile strikes from Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen, even the country's political rulers viewed the likelihood of this opinion with a significant degree of trepidation.
Although the opinion is not binding, there are fears it could hold sway with the International Criminal Court, which is thought to be close to issuing arrest warrants for both Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as further erode Israel's standing – as well as support for it – in other international bodies and arenas.
Israel did not take part in the hearings, instead submitting a written contribution describing the questions the court had been asked as "prejudicial" and "tendentious."
The ICJ's Lebanese President Nawaf Salam – who has a long-recorded history of bias against Israel – delivered the opinion, in which he said, "Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law."
The court further said Israel's obligations include paying restitution for harm and "the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements."
The case stems from a 2022 request for a legal opinion from the U.N. General Assembly, predating the war in Gaza. The ICJ clarified its definition of "occupied Palestinian territory" including Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem.
However, the majority of the opinions did not relate to Gaza – and did not include judgment on Israel's actions in the coastal enclave since the onset of the war – although the court rejected Israel's claims that because it had unilaterally withdrawn from the area in July 2005, it should no longer be deemed responsible. The ICJ explained Israel still retained some elements of control over Gaza, particularly about land, air, and sea access.
The court also ruled Israel had contravened both Articles 3 and 4 of the Geneva Convention. The former deals with the International Convention on the Elimination of Forms of Racial Discrimination, otherwise known as CERD, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid.
The ICJ opinion argued Israel's "transfer of settlers in the West Bank [sic] and east Jerusalem, as well as Israel's maintenance of their presence, is contrary to the sixth paragraph of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention."
There might be jeopardy attached to this finding and could form the basis of ICC war crimes charges against Israel in the future. It could also be used to implement sanctions against individual Israelis or Israeli entities and companies, which could make doing business highly problematic.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the opinion "historic" and urged states to adhere to it.
"No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No money, no arms, no trade … no actions of any kind to support Israel's illegal occupation," Palestinian envoy Riyad al-Maliki said outside the court in The Hague, according to Reuters.
Predictably, Israel's response was both rapid and dismissive.
"The Jewish people are not occupiers in their land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland," said Netanyahu.
"No absurd opinion in The Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their communities in our ancestral home."
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – whose political base is strongly based on those who have settled Judea and Samaria posted a pithy two-word rejoinder to The Hague court's decision: "Sovereignty Now."
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who, like Smotrich, draws much support from those living in Judea and Samaria posted a verse from Chapter 23 of the Book of Numbers: "He will dwell as a people alone and will not be counted among the nations."
Israel Ganz, Mayor of the Binyamin Regional Council located in Judea and Samaria echoed Smotrich's reply:
"The Hague Tribunal's decision encourages us to apply Israeli sovereignty."
"This is a decision contrary to justice and morality. And it is designed to bring Hamas terrorists closer to the beds of our children and women in the center of the country.
"The prime minister must quickly promote a government decision that will apply sovereignty over the territories of Judea and Samaria.
"We are back after 2,000 years, and no one will get us out of here again!"
Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel came out strongly against the opinion saying, "The Children of Israel are indigenous to the Holy Land … Neither the UN nor the ICJ has the authority to make pronouncements about Judea and Samaria."
Legal rejoinders also came thick and fast, and there was even one dissenting opinion from among the ICJ's judges.
The ICJ's Ugandan Vice President Judge Julia Sebutinde wrote a 36-page dismantling of the opinion, arguing "Court should have declined to give its Advisory Opinion in the present case." Principally she said, " The Advisory Opinion omits the historical backdrop crucial to understanding the multifaceted Israeli-Palestinian dispute and is tantamount to a one-sided 'forensic audit' of Israel's compliance with international law."
International human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, Arsen Ostrovsky, called the opinion "absurd" noting Israel was already considered guilty before a decision had even been delivered. "The decision will first and foremost reward Hamas for their actions, and it is another baseless and politically motivated decision."
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) legal director Natasha Hausdorff, a British attorney, who along with Douglas Murray humiliated both Mehdi Hasan and Haaretz's Gideon Levy at the June Munk Debate on the notion "Anti-Zionism is antisemitism," also rejected the ICJ's findings, as well as the process that led to its decision.
"This opinion has emanated from a … politicized court," she told Times Radio. "It has been waging a campaign against Israel, which unfortunately is based on false information."
She also highlighted facts on the ground, which were not adequately taken into consideration, such as some 93% of the population of east Jerusalem wishing to remain under Israeli rule of law rather than the Palestinian Authority.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has agreed to ban the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services from enforcing its private-investigator licensing requirement against anti-spam entrepreneur Jay Fink forever.
The decision comes from U.S. District Judge Rita Lin after a fight brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of Fink.
Eventually, the state agreed with the institute's arguments and jointly petitioned the court for a ruling to that effect.
The institute said an order from the state had intended to force Fink to get a license to run his business, but the court decided the requirement was so irrational it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"I'm thankful that I won't have to worry about losing my livelihood anymore," said Fink. "But the state never should have shut me down in the first place."
His work involves California's anti-spam act, which lets consumers sue spammers – if they compile evidence of the spam they have to handle.
"To do that, recipients often have to wade through thousands of emails. For more than a decade, Jay has offered a solution: he and his team will scour a client's junk folder and catalog the messages that likely violate the law," the IJ said.
"But last year the state announced that it was demanding he get a license as an investigator.
"A regulator told Jay he needed a license to read through emails that might be used as evidence in a lawsuit. And because Jay didn't have a private investigator license, the state shut him down," the institute said.
The cost of that license was huge. "Aside from paying fees and passing a test, he would have had to spend 6,000 hours training in fields completely unrelated to identifying spam, like arson investigation or investigative journalism," the report said.
That all made the demand from the state unconstitutional, the report said.
After the judge said Fink likely would win his case, the state "agreed to jointly petition the court for an order that forever prohibits it from enforcing its licensure law against Jay. That means he's immediately free to get back to work."
A lawyer for the IJ earlier explained that Fink "reads and writes at his desk," specifically what the First Amendment protects.
Dylan Moore, a litigation counsel for IJ, said, "It doesn't take 6,000 hours of training to learn how to identify spam messages and put them into a PDF. Anyone who has an internet connection and email address probably already knows how to do this, and the state isn't cracking down on them. Jay just takes the hassle and frustration out of the process. Just like reporters or authors who compile information for a living, Jay is protected by the First Amendment."
A federal court upheld a Mississippi law that confers a lifetime voting ban on felons convicted of certain crimes, The Hill reported. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision to strike down the law.
The law states that people convicted of felonies, including arson, bigamy, bribery, embezzlement, forgery, or theft, are barred from voting for life. The plaintiffs in the case sued on the grounds that this violated the U.S. Constitution's 4th Amendment and 14th Amendment.
Thursday's 13-6 decision demonstrated that the full court disagreed. The decision stated that overturning the law "would thwart the ability of the State’s legislature and citizens to determine their voting qualifications, and would require federal courts overtly to make legislative choices that, in our federal system, belong at the State level," the majority opinion said.
“Do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change. The paramount lesson of the Constitution and Richardson is that the changes sought by Plaintiffs here can and must be achieved through public consensus effectuated in the legislative process, not by judicial fiat," the document went on.
The plaintiffs have argued that disenfranchising felons violates the Equal Protection Clause. "Denying broad groups of our citizens, for life, the ability to have a role in determining who governs them diminishes our society and deprives individuals of the full rights of representative government," the plaintiffs' attorney Jon Youngwood said in a written statement.
"We remain confident in this case, and our clients remain committed to ensuring that their right to vote is restored." Previously, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit had deemed it "cruel and unusual" punishment to strip voting rights.
"Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement," the ruling from the smaller panel had determined. The decision said that "severing former offenders from the body politic forever, Section 241 ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society."
This portion was overruled by the opinion of the full court. "Every circuit court that has had the chance to invalidate felon disenfranchisement has rejected the opportunity," the later majority opinion said.
Mississippi has the strictest voting laws, with some 11% of the electorate deemed ineligible. While some complain about disenfranchising voters, this type of law could be a major story in the upcoming presidential election.
These rules about allowing convicted felons could become front and center during the presidential election in November. Former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a Manhattan court in May, the Associated Press reported.
Although he is not a resident of Mississippi, Trump's home state of Florida has similar rules that would keep him out of the voting booth. As the GOP presidential nominee, it will become fodder for his opposition if the candidate can't even vote for himself.
However, the liberal love affair with criminals may work in his favor this time. Since Trump was convicted in a New York court, where the laws are more favorable to felons, he may get to cast a ballot after all and provide a photo op that Democrats will bristle at.
"If a Floridian’s voting rights are restored in the state of conviction, they are restored under Florida law," explained Blair Bowie from the Campaign Legal Center. It remains to be seen what Trump's sentence will be in New York, but it appears the conviction is more meaningless by the day.
Felons have broken the law in a serious way, and they have to pay the price, even if it is for life. Allowing them the same rights to vote as the general public is antithetical to justice.