On review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has upheld Mississippi's lifetime felon disenfranchisement law, which ranks among the harshest in the nation, and reversed a panel decision last year that found it violated the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
The 5th Circuit ruled in a 13–6 decision Thursday that Mississippi's disenfranchisement scheme was not punishment, and even if it was, it wasn't cruel or unusual. To find otherwise, Judge Edith Jones wrote in the majority opinion, "even as to a limited set of offenders, is at odds with the Supreme Court's and other courts' decisions, would thwart the ability of the State's legislature and citizens to determine their voting qualifications, and would require federal courts overtly to make legislative choices that, in our federal system, belong at the State level."
