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A team from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett led by litigation department co-chair Jonathan Youngwood has joined forces with the Southern Poverty Law Center to challenge Mississippi's lifetime voting ban, which strips citizens of their right to vote for offenses as minor as writing a bad check.

The scheme, crafted in 1890, “remains one of the most extreme and unjust in the nation. Born out of racial animus and still disproportionately impacting black Mississippians, the scheme impermissibly denies the right to vote to tens of thousands of citizens across the state,” they wrote in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

The plaintiffs argue that the voting ban violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The suit also challenges Mississippi's legislative process for restoring voting rights, arguing that it violates citizens' First Amendment right to political expression and association as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Simpson team also includes Janet Gochman, Nihara Choudhri, Isaac Rethy and Tyler Anger.