Farrakhan

Plaintiffs appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment dismissing their claim that Washington state’s felon disenfranchisement scheme constitutes improper race-based vote denial in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“Section 2”), 42 U.S.C. § 1973 . Upon conviction of an infamous crime in the state of Washington, each plaintiff was disenfranchised, and none has had his voting rights restored.

The district court determined that although Washington’s felon disenfranchisement scheme disenfranchises a disproportionate number of African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American minorities, the cause of this disparate impact on their right to vote was external to the felon disenfranchisement provision itself and therefore could not provide the requisite causal link between the voting qualification and the prohibited discriminatory result.

Notably, the district court attributed the cause of this discriminatory effect on minority voting power to “discriminatory activity” in Washington’s criminal justice system. Although it determined that “Plaintiffs’ evidence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, and the resulting disproportionate impact on…