Conservatives on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit seemed skeptical of ruling for convicted felons seeking to declare a lifetime voting ban in Mississippi cruel and unusual punishment under the US Constitution.
Republican appointees on the New Orleans-based court at the en banc argument on Tuesday raised the implications of finding that permanent disenfranchisement of the right to vote is cruel and unusual, and how it could create issues in other contexts.
And some judges suggested that the issue is one for legislators, not the court.
Judge Kyle Duncan, a Donald Trump appointee, said that if the same arguments were presented to the Mississippi Legislature, they may “have a lot of purchase, but we are a court of law.”
Judge Edith Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee who was the lone dissenting vote on the circuit panel whose ruling was reviewed en banc, asked about people convicted of crimes like murder and rape regaining the right to vote.
Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee, asked how far a ruling finding a deprivation of the right to vote is a cruel and unusual punishment could stretch into other issues.
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