RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — Voting rights advocates celebrated progress against felon disenfranchisement after a federal judge in North Carolina ruled that felons cannot be prosecuted for unknowingly voting before the end of their sentence.
“We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time,” said Pat McCoy, the executive director of Action NC, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes.”
U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs, a President Barack Obama nominee, ruled Monday that the challenged statute, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-275(5), was enacted with discriminatory intent and disproportionately affected Black voters in violation of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As she granted the plaintiffs’ request for summary judgment, Biggs cited criminal charges brought against individuals who mistakenly voted in the 2016 election.
She also noted the vague nature of the statute, writing that a lack of clear standards allowed district attorneys “to pursue their personal predilections” in enforcement.
“Judge Biggs’ decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty,” Mitchell Brown, senior counsel for voting rights at Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said in a statement.
“It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law.”
Action NC and North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections in September of 2020, arguing that North Carolina’s strict liability law impeded their mission to inform and register voters, was intended to prevent Black individuals from voting and has deterred eligible voters with criminal convictions from voting.
Between 2015 and 2022, approximately 63% of the people who were investigated for violating the strict liability voting law were Black.
The plaintiffs also criticized the unclear process for regaining voting rights. The law said felons would regain the right to vote following an “unconditional discharge,” a process that is not defined by state law.
The groups focused on the lack of resources to inform felons they are ineligible to vote. For example, former Board of Elections volunteer scripts did not mention post-release supervision, so an individual on post-release supervision would be told by poll workers they could vote — then prosecuted for doing so illegallly.
Under North Carolina statute § 13-1, felons who are on parole, probation or post-release supervision can't vote until they complete their sentence. The strict liability voting law makes voting without restored voting rights a Class I crime carrying up to two years of jail time.
Felons on unsupervised probation may not even be aware they are legally on probation and unable to vote legally, the plaintiffs argued, and were not provided a fair notice that they could be criminally liable if they voted. The names of felons were not consistently removed from eligible voter lists in the 2016 election, and the Board of Elections didn’t include a checkbox on voting forms informing voters they are ineligible if they are currently serving a felony sentence.
The General Assembly amended the challenged statute in 2023, after different iterations of the law had been on the books since 1899. Senate Bill 747 passed in October, adding a "scienter requirement" that required illegal felony voting to be intentional, and not accidental.
Biggs still found the statute to be unconstitutional, and struck it down in her order Monday.
“The right to vote is a cornerstone of democracy,” said Jon Youngwood, co-chair of Simpson Thacher’s Litigation Department, who represented Action NC. “We are thrilled that the Court has seen fit to overturn North Carolina’s 145-year-old unconstitutional strict liability law.”
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