Opinion ID: 719599
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Congressional power

Text: 84 The State first contends that the Voting Rights Act may not constitutionally be applied to discrimination among felons based on race because of the insulation States enjoy in matters of felon disenfranchisement by virtue of § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. That section provides: 85 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers.... But when the right to vote ... is denied ... or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be [proportionally] reduced.... 86 U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2 (emphasis added). According to the State, the Fourteenth Amendment thus expressly permits the State to disenfranchise convicted felons. Thus, the State's argument goes, since Congress may not override this constitutional authorization, the Voting Rights Act does not provide a basis for a challenge to § 5-106. This contention, however, has been substantially undermined by the Supreme Court's decision in Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222, 105 S.Ct. 1916, 85 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985). Before Hunter, it might have been plausibly argued that § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment carves all aspects of felon disenfranchisement out of the purview of the Equal Protection Clause, which is in the very same amendment. However, the Supreme Court in Hunter easily disposed of that contention. 87 The plaintiffs in Hunter attacked a provision in the Alabama Constitution of 1901 that disenfranchised those who had committed various crimes, including any crime ... involving moral turpitude. The suit was brought under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983, and claimed, among other things, that the Alabama Constitution had intentionally disenfranchised blacks. The Supreme Court unanimously accepted this proposition and held the Alabama provision unconstitutional. The Court addressed the effect of § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, so heavily relied on by the State in its argument to us. The Court stated: 88 The single remaining question is whether [the Alabama provision] is excepted from the operation of the Equal Protection Clause of § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment by the other crime provision of § 2 of that Amendment.... [W]e are confident that § 2 was not designed to permit the purposeful racial discrimination attending the enactment and operation of [the Alabama provision] which otherwise violates § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nothing in our opinion in Richardson v. Ramirez, supra, suggests the contrary. 89 471 U.S. at 233. 90 In support of its argument regarding Congressional lack of power, the State also relies on Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24, 94 S.Ct. 2655, 41 L.Ed.2d 551 (1974) and, apparently, on Green v. Board of Elections, 380 F.2d 445 (2d Cir.1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1048, 88 S.Ct. 768, 19 L.Ed.2d 840 (1968). The former decision, which held that States could disenfranchise felons, was summarily brushed aside in the language from Hunter quoted immediately above. And Green did not involve either a claim of racial discrimination or the Voting Rights Act. Neither Richardson nor Green holds that felon disenfranchisement statutes that discriminate on the basis of race are beyond the reach of the Equal Protection Clause. 91 I agree that States have the right to disenfranchise felons; § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment makes that clear. States, however, do not have the right to disenfranchise felons on the basis of race. And, to prevent such discrimination, I see no persuasive reason, in view of Hunter, why Congress may not use its enforcing power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment to bar racially discriminatory results, as it did in the Voting Rights Act. 92 Plaintiffs here allege that § 5-106, which disenfranchises only some felons, discriminates among felons based on race. 3 The panel did not suggest in Baker III, 58 F.3d at 824-25, nor do I suggest here, that plaintiffs have stated a claim under the Act merely because § 5-106 disenfranchises only some felons. While a State may choose to disenfranchise some, all or none of its felons based on legitimate concerns, it may not do so based upon distinctions that have the effect, whether intentional or not, of disenfranchising felons because of their race. 93