Richardson v. Ramirez

Richardson v. Ramirez
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 15, 1974 Decided June 24, 1974
Full case name	Viola N. Richardson v. Abran Ramirez et al.
Citations	418 U.S. 24 (more) 94 S. Ct. 2655, 41 L. Ed. 2d 551
Prior history	Ramirez v. Brown, 9 Cal.3d 199 (1973). Appeal from the Supreme Court of California
Subsequent history	Ramirez v. Brown, 12 Cal. 3d 912 (Cal. 1974)
Holding
Convicted felons may be constitutionally disenfranchised.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William O. Douglas · William J. Brennan, Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell, Jr. · William Rehnquist
Case opinions
Majority	Rehnquist, joined by Burger, Stewart, White, Blackmun, Powell
Dissent	Marshall, joined by Brennan, Douglas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974), held that convicted felons could be barred from voting without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

Facts

Plaintiffs, who had been convicted of felonies and had completed their sentences, brought a class action against California’s Secretary of State and election officials, challenging a state constitutional provision and statutes that permanently disenfranchised anyone convicted of an “infamous crime,” unless the right to vote was restored by court order or executive pardon.

Typically in voting rights cases, states must show that the voting restriction is necessary to a “compelling state interest,” and is the least restrictive means of achieving the state’s objective. In this case, the plaintiffs argued that the state had no compelling interest to justify denying them the right to vote. The California Supreme Court agreed that the law was unconstitutional. On appeal, however, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a state does not have to prove that its felony disenfranchisement laws serve a compelling state interest.

Decision

The Court pointed to Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which exempted felony disenfranchisement laws from the heightened scrutiny given to other restrictions on the right to vote. The Court said that Section 2, which reduces a state’s representation in Congress if the state has denied the right to vote for any reason “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime,” distinguishes felony disenfranchisement from other forms of voting restrictions, which must be narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests in order to be constitutional.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 418

External links

• Full text of the decision courtesy of Justia
• Gabriel J. Chin, "Reconstruction, Felon Disenfranchisement and the Right to Vote: Did the Fifteenth Amendment Repeal Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment?", 92 Georgetown Law Journal 259(2004)