Advertisement

Iowa Supreme Court takes case on felon voting rights

By Ann Marie Awad

DES MOINES, Iowa, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Iowa's Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the state's ban on voting by convicted felons.

The move comes a day after Maryland granted voting rights to felons through an override of Gov. Larry Hogan's veto.

Advertisement

Meanwhile in Kentucky, newly elected Gov. Matt Bevin overturned the previous governor's executive order granting such rights in December.

Iowa's state constitution bars people convicted of an "infamous crime" from voting. A 2014 ruling by Iowa's Supreme Court muddied the waters in terms of what constituted an "infamous crime." The lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, seeks to clarify the meaning of the term.

"Iowa's criminal disenfranchisement laws permanently deprive citizens, like our client Kelli Griffin, of their fundamental right to vote," ACLU voting rights lawyer Julie Ebenstein told MSNBC. "Lifetime disenfranchisement is destructive to democracy and to the re-entry efforts of citizens who have served their sentence, which in Kelli's case was a term of probation. We're encouraged that the Iowa Supreme Court will hear our case on this significant issue."

Advertisement

Iowa, Florida and Kentucky are the only three states with such bans. The two Democratic presidential contenders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have expressed interest in doing away with them. Clinton introduced a bill to allow felons the right to vote during her time in the Senate. Late last year, Sanders hosted a criminal justice reform panel in Iowa, where one speaker called himself a "second-class citizen" because his criminal record did not allow him to vote.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who dropped out of the presidential race last week, also supported restoring voting rights to felons convicted of certain crimes.

Latest Headlines