Florida has arrested and prosecuted many returning citizens—persons with felony convictions who are no longer incarcerated—for registering and voting while ineligible. These prosecutions have occurred amid widespread confusion about voting rights restoration in Florida and have been initiated by an Office of Statewide Prosecutor (“OSP”) that has no authority to bring these criminal actions.

Mississippi is home to one of the strictest felon disenfranchisement schemes in the nation. The Mississippi Constitution permanently disenfranchises citizens upon a single felony conviction for certain crimes, including minor offenses like writing a bad check. As a result, the loss of rights under Mississippi’s scheme is mandatory, permanent, and effectively irrevocable. In Hopkins, plaintiffs, a class of formerly incarcerated individuals who lost their right to vote despite completing their sentences, argued that their disenfranchisement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and struck down Mississippi’s disenfranchisement scheme as cruel and unusual punishment. But the Fifth Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc, a rare occurrence in which a case is reconsidered by the entire panel of the circuit’s active judges.

Florida’s statewide uniform voter registration application does not include information specifying voter eligibility requirements for Floridians with past convictions, creating confusion and putting people in danger of criminal penalties. This lack of information violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to inform applicants of eligibility requirements on voter registration forms.

Whether Mississippi’s 1890 felony disenfranchisement law, adopted for the express purpose of disenfranchising Black voters, violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal. Protection Clause.