Judge rules Virginia unlawfully denied voting rights to hundreds of thousands
A federal court ruled Thursday that Virginia’s lifetime voting ban for people with certain felony convictions violates federal law — a landmark decision that could restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians, especially Black residents long targeted by the ban.
U.S. District Court Judge John Gibney, appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled that Virginia’s constitution unlawfully strips voting rights far beyond what Congress allowed when it readmitted the state to the Union after the Civil War.
The postwar law — the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870 — was designed specifically to protect the political power of newly freed Black Americans.
“For well over a century, the Commonwealth of Virginia has disobeyed a federal law designed to protect the right of former enslaved people to vote,” Gibney wrote. “When the United States started to readmit the rebellious slave states after the Civil War, Congress feared that the former Confederate powers would invent new crimes with which they could disenfranchise Black Americans.”
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/judge-rules-virginia-unlawfully-denied-voting-rights-to-hundreds-of-thousands/