Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1974), held that convicted felons could be barred from voting without violating the Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

.

Facts

Plaintiffs, who had been convicted of felonies and had completed their sentences, brought a class action against California’s Secretary of State and election officials, challenging a state constitutional provision and statutes that permanently disfranchised anyone convicted of an “infamous crime,” unless the right to vote was restored by court order or executive pardon.

Typically in voting rights cases, states must show that the voting restriction is necessary to a “compelling state interest,” and is the least restrictive means of achieving the state’s objective. In this case, the plaintiffs argued that the state had no compelling interest to justify denying them the right to vote. The California Supreme Court agreed that the law was unconstitutional. On appeal, however, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a state does not have to prove that its felony disfranchisement laws serve a compelling state interest.

Decision

The Court pointed to Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which exempted felony disfranchisement laws from the heightened scrutiny given to other restrictions on the right to vote. The Court said that Section 2, which reduces a state’s representation in Congress if the state has denied the right to vote for any reason “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime,” distinguishes felony disfranchisement from other forms of voting restrictions, which must be narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests in order to be constitutional.

External links

• Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com
• Gabriel J. Chin, "Reconstruction, Felon Disenfranchisement and the Right to Vote: Did the Fifteenth Amendment Repeal Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment?", 92 Georgetown Law Journal 259(2004)