A North Carolina law that criminalizes voting by disenfranchised felons—even if they mistakenly believe they are eligible to vote—is unconstitutional, the Fourth Circuit held Friday.
The post-Civil War law was motivated by a desire to discriminate against Black people and continues to have that effect in violation of the US Constitution’s equal protection clause, Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin said for the US Court of Appeals to the Fourth Circuit.
This isn’t the first felon disenfranchisement law with post-Civil War roots to be challenged in court. For example, in Hopkins v. Hoseman, the Fifth Circuit found that Mississippi’s law was ...