Democrats and leftist activists supported a legal challenge against a provision of Mississippi's Constitution that revokes the right to vote for individuals convicted of certain felony crimes in that state and had high hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule the lifetime consequence as unconstitutional.

Unfortunately for them, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up that case and will instead allow a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the challenged provision to stand, The Hill reported.

That means that Mississippians convicted of certain felony crimes, as specified in the state's constitution, will continue to lose their right to vote for the rest of their lives, barring a pardon from the governor or intervention from two-thirds of the state legislature.

Loss of voting rights challenged

Reuters reported that six Mississippi men who'd previously been convicted of certain felonies that left them disenfranchised for life even after completing the entirety of their sentences had challenged the constitutional provision in court.

They argued that the loss of voting rights for life was an alleged violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, in that the lifetime punishment was "cruel and unusual" and broke the promise of "equal protection" under the law.

At issue is Article XII, Sec. 241 of the Mississippi Constitution, initially adopted in 1890 but further amended multiple times over the decades, which strips the right to vote from individuals convicted in the state of specific felony crimes that include "murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, or bigamy."

The challengers argued that when the provision was first drafted, the lawmakers who authored it allegedly expressed their racist intent to disenfranchise black voters and supposedly included only purported "black crimes" on the list of disqualifying felony offenses while leaving off purported "white crimes."

It was further noted by the challengers that of all of the disenfranchised convicted felons in the state, more than 58% were black, even though blacks only make up around 38% of the state's population.

Appellate court upholds disenfranchisement

According to Reuters, the six convicted felon Mississippians who'd lost their right to vote by way of their own criminal acts filed a class action lawsuit in 2018 but eventually saw their race-related claims about disenfranchisement dismissed by a federal district judge.

The matter was appealed to the 5th Circuit and, in 2023, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the lifetime disenfranchisement violated the 8th Amendment but not the 14th Amendment, with one judge calling the state's punishment an "outlier" among other states across the country.

That legal victory was short-lived, however, as the case was further appealed to the full 5th Circuit, and the three-judge panel's ruling was reversed last year by a 13-6 vote to uphold the lifetime loss of voting rights as an acceptable punishment under the U.S. Constitution.

Rejected by the Supreme Court for a second time

The case of Hopkins v. Watson, which raises the 8th and 14th Amendment arguments, was subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court and was reportedly considered by the justices during a conference meeting last week.

SCOTUSblog reported last week that this is actually the second time in three years that the Mississippi disenfranchisement provision has reached the Supreme Court, with the prior challenge being rejected by a majority of justices in 2023, albeit with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor registering their dissent with that decision.

Much to their dismay, though, the high court has again declined to take up the case, leaving the challengers and their supporters out of luck and sans voting rights for the remainder of their lives, barring a grant of clemency and restoration of rights by the governor or two-thirds of the state legislature.