Opinion ID: 2517881
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Violation of the Equal Protection Clause

Text: ¶ 82 Here, felons remain disenfranchised based solely on their ability or inability to pay LFOs. The United States Supreme Court has held that denying one the right to vote due to his or her inability to pay a fee is unconstitutional: We conclude that a State violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Harper, 383 U.S. at 666, 86 S.Ct. 1079. The Court reasoned that [v]oter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying [a] tax. Id. Thus, the United States Supreme Court struck down poll taxes, which required individuals to pay a fee or tax in order to vote. [1] ¶ 83 The majority claims that the reasoning in Harper does not apply to felons or ex-felons because section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment makes their right to vote nonfundamental. This is contrary to my conclusion above. Furthermore, even a court that found felons do not have a fundamental right to vote rejected the majority's conclusion: [W]e are similarly unable to accept the proposition that section 2 removes all equal protection considerations from state-created classifications denying the right to vote to some felons while granting it to others. No one would contend that section 2 permits a state to disenfranchise all felons and then reenfranchise only those who are, say, white. Nor can we believe that section 2 would permit a state to make a completely arbitrary distinction between groups of felons with respect to the right to vote. Shepherd v. Trevino, 575 F.2d 1110, 1114 (5th Cir.1978). ¶ 84 Again a comparison to Williams is useful. In Williams, a felon was sentenced to the maximum incarceration period of one year and a fine. Because Williams was indigent, he was unable to pay the fine. As a result, he remained incarcerated for an additional 101 days to work off the fine, pursuant to a statute equating a day of imprisonment to $5. The Court recognized that the felon had received his sentence due to his criminal act and not because he was indigent. However, it went on to conclude: [T]he Illinois statute as applied to Williams works an invidious discrimination solely because he is unable to pay the fine. On its face the statute extends to all defendants an apparently equal opportunity for limiting confinement to the statutory maximum simply by satisfying a money judgment. In fact, this is an illusory choice for Williams or any indigent who, by definition, is without funds. Since only a convicted person with access to funds can avoid the increased imprisonment, the Illinois statute in operative effect exposes only indigents to the risk of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum. By making the maximum confinement contingent upon one's ability to pay, the State has visited different consequences on two categories of persons since the result is to make incarceration in excess of the statutory maximum applicable only to those without the requisite resources to satisfy the money portion of the judgment. Williams, 399 U.S. at 242, 90 S.Ct. 2018 (footnote omitted). Likewise, the requirement that LFOs be paid before voting rights are restored serves to extend the punishment of felons who lack the resources to pay the LFOs. ¶ 85 The injustice this works is obvious. As respondents point out, If the state sentencing guidelines said that judges should sentence wealthy felons to five years incarceration followed by immediate restoration of rights and sentence poor felons to five years incarceration followed by lifetime disenfranchisement, the equal protection problem would be apparent. Br. of Resp'ts/Cross Appellants at 24. Although the majority is correct in stating that the State need not `eliminate all inequalities between the rich and the poor,' majority at 769 (quoting In re Pers. Restraint of Runyan, 121 Wash.2d 432, 449, 853 P.2d 424 (1993) (quoting Riggins v. Rhay, 75 Wash.2d 271, 283, 450 P.2d 806 (1969))), it cannot create such inequalities by tying voting to the ability to pay. To do so violates the fundamental fairness required by the Fourteenth Amendment. Bearden, 461 U.S. at 673, 103 S.Ct. 2064. ¶ 86 Accordingly, I respectfully dissent. TOM CHAMBERS and CHARLES W. JOHNSON, JJ., concur. CHAMBERS, J. (concurring in dissent).