Earlier this spring, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order restoring voting rights to approximately 200,000 citizens who have completed their terms of incarceration and supervised release (including probation or parole).1 He also announced that, going forward, those who satisfy these criteria will be eligible for rights restoration on a monthly basis.2 Litigation has ensued. A few weeks after McAuliffe’s order, the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Majority Leader of the Virginia Senate, and others filed a lawsuit in the state’s Supreme Court challenging it on state constitutional grounds.3 The plaintiffs argued that McAuliffe did not have the authority to restore voting rights en masse; in other words, he could restore them person by person, but not a whole group in one fell swoop.4
A political fight over the use of executive authority to restore voting rights is not new. Nor is turning to the courts to decide whether state disenfranchisement laws are lawful. What is new is the use of state courts to adjudicate a largely political battle over the use of executive authority to restore voting rights.
Laws and Court Rulings
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