A long-running dispute over Virginia’s disenfranchisement of felons continues – with a possible court hearing in the case coming this fall.
The state argues it's a misunderstanding of language from the civil rights group.
According to Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, the Commonwealth’s constitutional amendment barring felons from voting is legal because the definition of a “felony” when the law was passed was different than what we understand now.
“From the time the Commonwealth first codified its criminal law in 1848 through the ratification of the 1869 Constitution, it defined ‘felonies’ as crimes ‘which are punishable with death or confinement in the penitentiary’,” the state’s argument reads. And The Virginia Readmission Act, approved by Congress in 1869, welcoming the Commonwealth back into the United States after the Civil War, actually authorized Virginia to “continue disenfranchising those convicted of any felony.”
But ACLU of Virginia attorney Vishal Agraharkar said Virginia’s disenfranchisement scheme was well known.
“Virginia, like many other Confederate states, tried to keep newly freed Black voters away from the ballot box and they did that by targeting Black people with a number of criminal convictions,” the attorney told Radio IQ.
Agraharkar said the Virginia Readmission Act was the federal remedy to that racially targeted disenfranchisement, but it’s been ignored ever since its passage.
A federal Appeals Court heard the dispute last fall, and even conservative jurist Paul Niemeyer seemed taken aback at the scope of felon disenfranchisement the state had since achieved. According to ACLU of Virginia approximately one in eight eligible Black voters are disenfranchised, triple the national average.
Agraharkar said he wouldn’t speculate on how the appeals court hearing could impact the future of the dispute, but he said a proposed amendment to the Virginia constitution set for a second vote during the 2026 legislative session could moot the fight entirely.
Until then, a judge could dismiss the dispute in favor of either party ahead of a loosely scheduled trial set for later in the fall.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
