The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU are pursuing a case in Washington state, attempting to restore the right to vote to certain convicted felons. They contend that the policy of felon disenfranchisement is discriminatory against African-Americans, and in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Sharon Browne, a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, and Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity offer this opinion in opposition.

From Sharon Browne and Roger Clegg, The Los Angeles Times:

Every state in the country except two – Maine and Vermont – prohibits at least some felons from voting. In January, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the state of Washington is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising felons. Now the full 9th Circuit has decided to hear the case, Farrakhan vs. Gregoire. The case has implications for all nine states within the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, including California. Every other federal court of appeals so far has ruled against using the Voting Rights Act to give felons the right to vote.

The 9th Circuit should join them.

If a state were to use its felon disenfranchisement laws deliberately to keep blacks from voting, as was sometimes done in the Jim Crow era, then it is clear it would be in violation of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has so ruled. But what if there is no such discriminatory intent: Is it enough to show that a disproportionate number of, say, African Americans are in prison?

The answer is clearly no when it comes to the Constitution. The claim in Farrakhan, however, is that such disproportionate “results” are enough to prove a violation of the federal voting rights law. The intent and history of the law refutes this claim.

[T]he Constitution explicitly assumes that felons may be barred from voting. The 14th Amendment – which, like the 15th, was passed during Reconstruction to ensure equal treatment of African Americans – acknowledges that states can disenfranchise people for “participation in rebellion, or other crime.” So an interpretation of the Voting Rights Act to bar felon disenfranchisement would not only be inconsistent with the intent of that statute, it would exceed Congress’ constitutional authority.

Or look at it this way: When someone is kept from voting because he has been convicted of a felony, this does not “result in a denial or abridgement of the right … to vote on account of race or color” (to quote the law); it results in the denial of the right to vote because that person has chosen to commit a serious crime against a fellow citizen.

If you aren’t willing to follow the law, you can’t demand a role in making the law.

Continue to the full article at The Los Angeles Times.