A federal appeals court for the western United Sates has issued a stunning decision upholding the rights of incarcerated felons to vote in Washington State. The ruling by a three-judge-panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Farrakhan vs. Gregoire in Seattle held that the disenfranchisement law denying incarcerated felons the right to vote violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising minority voters.
The court’s finding represents a dynamic shift in America’s federal courts of appeals from a case that was booted between district courts and the court of appeals for 14 years. Last January the Ninth Circuit firmly placed the actions of denying incarcerated felons their right to vote with practices that violate the constitution under the Federal Voting Rights Act, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. Laws that prevent felons from voting in other Ninth Circuit states such as Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands and Oregon are now included.
The case was first filed in 1996 by Muhammad Shabazz Farrakhan while he was serving a three year sentence at Washington State Prison in Walla Walla. : As the case evolved five other inmates, all members of a racial minority group, joined the suit as plaintiffs. Evidence presented in the case included key research by a University of Washington sociologist who found that African Americans are nine times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. The plaintiffs demonstrated to the panel that minorities in Washington are stopped, arrested and ultimately convicted in higher disproportionate numbers than whites, thus making the bar against incarcerated felons voting inherently discriminatory.
The defendants also presented evidence which showed that the ratio of arrests for violent crime among African Americans and whites is less than four-to-one. One result of that is that 25 percent of African American men in Washington are disenfranchised from voting. The results also found that African Americans are 70 percent more likely, along with, Latinos and Native Americans 50 percent more likely than whites to be searched in traffic stops.
The studies “speak to a durable, sustained indifference in treatment faced by minorities in Washington’s criminal justice system. These disparities cannot be explained by ‘factors independent of race.’” Wrote Judge A. Wallace Tashima in his decision
State Attorney General Rob McKenna has said his office will appeal the ruling back to a larger 9th Circuit panel or perhaps to the United States Supreme “If upheld by the Supreme Court this decision would apply to all felons currently in prison and on parole all across America.” McKenna disputes two items; the analytical legal reasoning of the court and the research. “This is a misapplication of the Voting Rights Act by the 9th Circuit.”
It is an unarguable foundation that the 9th Circuit held its ruling on which is members of some minority groups are continuously imprisoned more than white people, and that this disparity cannot all be explained under the fact that minorities commit more crimes. Although in Farrakhan the lower court had found “compelling” evidence of bias in Washington’s criminal justice system. (From Crosscut Daily E-Mail By Daniel Jack Chasan.)The judges concluded it was the highly unequal rates of incarceration that had in fact, stopped minorities from voting.
But in the end the 9th Circuit blazed a different course of legal thought the majority surmised if a racially biased system kept minorities from voting, there was no need to look further.
