Opinion ID: 147347
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Legislative history and the Reconstruction and Enabling Acts

Text: With the plain meaning and contemporary usage of the word crime stacked against them, plaintiffs next turn to the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment. They find no support in the immediate drafting history or the debates surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment, which they argue should not count against them because the Supreme Court has noted that [t]he legislative history bearing on the meaning of the relevant language of § 2 is scant indeed. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 43, 94 S.Ct. 2655. But what little history there is regarding inclusion of the word crime in Section 2 undermines plaintiffs' argument. For instance, Representative Ephraim R. Eckley of Ohio made the following observation in support of Section 2: Under a Congressional act persons convicted of a crime against the laws of the United States, the penalty for which is imprisonment in the penitentiary, are now and always have been disfranchised. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2535 (1866). Like the dictionaries plaintiffs cite, this statement supports the view that crimes might be limited to serious crimes, or crimes the penalty for which is imprisonment in the penitentiary, but both of those categories include the plaintiffs' offenses and conflict with their common-law felony theory. Beyond this drafting history, [f]urther light is shed on the understanding of those who framed and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus on the meaning of § 2, by the fact that at the time of the adoption of the Amendment, 29 States had provisions in their constitutions which prohibited, or authorized the legislature to prohibit, exercise of the franchise by persons convicted of felonies or infamous crimes. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 48 & n. 14, 94 S.Ct. 2655 (citing state constitutions). Of the 29 State constitutions that Richardson referred to, it does not appear that any of them limited disenfranchisement to persons convicted of common-law felonies. See, e.g., Ala. Const. art. VI, § 5 (1819) (providing for disenfranchisement of persons convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors); Conn. Const. art. VI, § 3 (1818) (bribery, forgery, perjury, duelling, fraudulent bankruptcy, theft, or other offence for which an infamous punishment is inflicted); Del. Const. art. IV, § 1 (1831) (convicted of a crime deemed by law a felony); Ore. Const. art. II, § 3 (1857) (of any crime which is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary); Va. Const. art. III, § 14 (1830) (convicted of any infamous offence). It would be remarkable if the many states ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment intended to nullify their own constitutional provisions, but that is exactly what plaintiffs' reading of Section 2 entails. Finding no help in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification, plaintiffs focus their argument on the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867. The Reconstruction Act was enacted by the 39th Congress in 1867nine months after the very same Congress submitted the Fourteenth Amendment to the States for ratification. Section 5 of the Act established conditions on which the former Confederate States would be readmitted to representation in Congress. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 49, 94 S.Ct. 2655. Section 5 of the Act provided, in part: That when the people of any one of said rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disenfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law .... said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and senators and representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State. 14 Stat. 428, § 5 (emphasis added). [2] Similarly, the various enabling acts used to readmit the Confederate States to representation in Congress provide, in nearly identical language, that a fundamental condition of readmission is that their state constitutions shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote by the constitution thereof herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law.  15 Stat. 73 (1868) (emphasis added) (readmitting North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Florida); see also 15 Stat. 72 (1868) (readmitting Arkansas); 16 Stat. 62 (1870) (readmitting Virginia); 16 Stat. 67 (1870) (readmitting Mississippi). Plaintiffs conclude that because the Reconstruction and Enabling Acts only permitted disenfranchisement for felonies at common law, so too must Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment be read to only permit disenfranchisement for felonies at common law. But the opposite is true. The Reconstruction Act's reference to felonies at common law only shows that when the 39th Congress meant to specify felonies at common law, it was quite capable of using that phrase. That Congress used the phrase other crime in Section 2, while specifying felony at common law in a later act, clearly indicates that the two phrases have different meanings and Congress was capable of using each when it intended to do so. Plaintiffs' responsewhich is really the driving force of their entire argumentis that we must read Section 2 and the Reconstruction and Enabling Acts harmoniously and interpret them identically because to do otherwise would mean that the Fourteenth Amendment is in direct and absolute conflict with the Reconstruction and Enabling Acts. Harvey Br. at 31. That is, if we reject plaintiffs' argument, the Fourteenth Amendment would permit what the Reconstruction Act explicitly prohibits: disenfranchisement for statutory felonies. See Harvey Br. at 32 ([Section 2], as construed by the District Court, affirmatively authorizes disenfranchisement for statutory felonies. The Acts prohibit disenfranchisement for statutory felonies. It is hard to imagine a more self-evident conflict.). The most glaring flaw with this argument is that the absence of a constitutional prohibition does not somehow bar a statutory one. Simply because the Fourteenth Amendment does not itself prohibit States from enacting a broad array of felon disenfranchisement schemes does not mean that Congress cannot do so through legislationprovided, of course, that Congress has the authority to enact such a prohibition. Plaintiffs' confusion on this point seems to stem from language in Richardson, in which the Supreme Court noted that felon disenfranchisement is given an affirmative sanction in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. 418 U.S. at 54, 94 S.Ct. 2655. But the affirmative sanction language in Richardson only means that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit felon disenfranchisement because Section 2 brings it outside of Section 1's prohibition. It certainly does not mean that a certain felon disenfranchisement scheme is constitutionally mandated by Section 2, as plaintiffs would read it. Plaintiffs' reliance on the Eleventh Circuit's opinion in Johnson v. Governor of Florida, 405 F.3d 1214 (11th Cir.2005), is also misguided. Johnson held that felon-disenfranchisement claims are not cognizable under the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which proscribes States from enacting voter qualifications or standards that discriminate based on race. Id. at 1234; 42 U.S.C. § 1973. As support for this conclusion, it reasoned that if section 2 of the VRA extended to such claims, the VRA would prohibit a practice that the Fourteenth Amendment permits Florida to maintain. Johnson, 405 F.3d at 1234. The Eleventh Circuit's point was not that the VRA would somehow conflict with Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment if it were interpreted to bar felon disenfranchisement, but that it would be beyond Congress's Section 5 enforcement power. See U.S. Const. amend XIV, § 5 (The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of [the Fourteenth Amendment].); see also Baker v. Pataki, 85 F.3d 919, 930 (2d Cir.1996) (opinion of Mahoney, J.) ([A]ny attempt by Congress to subject felon disenfranchisement provisions to the `results' methodology of [the VRA] would pose a serious constitutional question concerning the scope of Congress' power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.); Farrakhan v. Washington, 359 F.3d 1116, 1121-25 (9th Cir.2004) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (arguing that felon disenfranchisement claims are not cognizable under the VRA). The argument in Johnson was that a congressional Act prohibiting felon disenfranchisement could not be authorized under Congress's Section 5 powers because such an Act would not be enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, which plainly permits felon disenfranchisement. But see Farrakhan v. Washington, 338 F.3d 1009, 1016 (9th Cir.2003). But the Reconstruction Act was most assuredly not enacted under the Section 5 power, as it preceded the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification by more than a year. Cf. Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 192, 91 S.Ct. 260, 27 L.Ed.2d 272 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (discussing the Reconstruction Congress's power to interfere with state voter qualifications, positing that this power was said to exist in a variety of constitutional provisions, including Art. I, § 2, Art. I, § 4, the war power, the power over territories, the guarantee of a republican form of government, and § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment.). Johnson, therefore, is inapposite. Finally, even if we could discern some conflict between Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Reconstruction and Enabling Acts, plaintiffs' suggestion that this requires reading the Amendment to comport with the Acts has it exactly backward. See Harvey Br. at 35 (The Fourteenth Amendment should be construed so that it is consistent with the Acts.). The canon of constitutional avoidanceproviding that a court will not pass upon a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which the case may be disposedis not a two-way street. There is no canon of statutory avoidance. Courts construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems, not the other way around. At bottom, plaintiffs urge an interpretation of Section 2's other crime provision that is in extreme tension with Richardson, contrary to the phrase's plain meaning and its past and contemporary usage, and belied by the Fourteenth Amendment's history. In response to these failings, they offer only an imaginary constitutional dilemma accompanied by an invitation to insert language into the Fourteenth Amendment's text because of a newly conceived canon of statutory avoidance that contradicts basic principles of constitutional interpretation. We decline their invitation and reject their equal protection claim.