A divided Iowa Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling Thursday that means felons will continue to be permanently barred from voting in the state. The justices split 4-3. Iowa is one of only three states—the others being Florida and Kentucky—that bars convicted felons from ever voting again after they complete their sentences, unless they succeed in petitioning the governor. The 68-page ruling affects an estimated 57,000 felons in Iowa. Jason Noble reports:
The constitutional prohibition was seen as making it harder for ex-offenders to reintegrate into society and as having a disproportionate impact on African-Americans, who are incarcerated at higher rates in Iowa.
The plaintiff in this case, however, is white. She’s Kelli Jo Griffin, a 42-year-old resident of southeast Iowa who was convicted in 2008 of a cocaine delivery charge and given a suspended prison sentence plus five years of probation, which she completed in 2013. That year, she went to the polls for an election, believing her voting rights had been restored. They hadn’t been. She was subsequently charged with perjury during a voter fraud investigation by the Iowa secretary of state’s office. A jury acquitted her in 2014.
Since the first Iowa Constitution was ratified in 1846, the state has specifically barred voting by anyone who has been convicted of an “infamous crime.” In 1994, the state legislature enacted a statute declaring that description to apply to all felonies. But an Iowa Supreme Court ruling issued in 2014 that excluded misdemeanors from consideration as infamous crimes indicated the justices might find the legislature’s imposition of felony disenfranchisement as too strict.
But, in an opinion that includes more than 35 pages devoted to a historical analysis of the changing legal and societal views of what constitutes infamous crimes, the court majority decided the 1994 statute is consistent with evolving standards in the matter in Iowa—and across the nation.
In this case, there is insufficient evidence to overcome the 1994 legislative judgment, and we must accept it today as the standard for infamous crime. It will be up to our future democracy to give the necessary voice to the issue and engage in the debate that advances democracy.
In the end, we are constrained to conclude that all objective indicia of today’s standard of infamy supports the conclusion that an infamous crime has evolved to be defined as a felony. This is the community standard expressed by our legislature and is consistent with the basic standard we have used over the years.
That’s an amazing conclusion given that only three states hold to such a strict standard of disenfranchisement.