Harness v. Watson, No. 19-60632 (5th Cir. 2022)
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The issue before the en banc court was whether the current version of Miss. Const. art. 12, Section 241 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. This provision was upheld in Cotton v. Fordice, 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), which was binding on the district court and the panel decision here, but the court voted to reconsider Cotton en banc.
Plaintiffs are black men in Mississippi who were convicted, respectively, of forgery and embezzlement. Both are disenfranchised under current Mississippi law because of their convictions. They filed suit against the Mississippi Secretary of State under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restore the voting rights of convicted felons in Mississippi. They contend that the crimes that “remain” in Section 241 from the 1890 Constitution are still tainted by the racial animus with which they were originally enacted.
The Fifth Circuit reaffirmed that the current version of Section 241 superseded the previous provisions and removed the discriminatory taint associated with the provision adopted in 1890. Cotton, 157 F.3d at 391–92. Further, the court held that Plaintiffs failed to establish the 1968 reenactment of Section 241 was motivated by racism. The court explained that contrary to Plaintiffs’ principal assertion, the critical issue here is not the intent behind Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution, but whether the reenactment of Section 241 in 1968 was free of intentional racial discrimination. Accordingly, as a matter of law, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that Section 241 as it currently stands was motivated by discriminatory intent or that any other approach to demonstrating the provision’s unconstitutionality is viable.
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on February 23, 2021.
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