'Invidious scheme': Supreme Court refuses to hear case challenging Mississippi 'Jim Crow' law

The United States Supreme Court, on Friday, decided not to hear a case against a longtime Mississippi rule denying the right to vote to persons "convicted of certain felonies," CNN reports.

Per the report, and according to critics, the state rule disproportionately impact Black voters.

According to NBC, "The court's decision not to hear the case prompted a sharp dissenting opinion from liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor," who "contrasted the decision on Friday with the court's ruling a day earlier that" ended affirmative action.

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Furthermore, CNN notes both justices "argued that the court had made 'clear and momentous errors.'"

Jackson wrote, "If the court viewed affirmative action as race discrimination, then the Mississippi measure must be seen similarly," adding, "So at the same time that the court undertakes to slay other giants, Mississippians can only hope they will not have to wait another century for another judicial knight-errant. Constitutional wrongs do not right themselves."

CNN reports:

The challengers in the case, Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem, are Black men in the state who have been convicted of forgery and embezzlement, respectively, and have served their time. They are currently barred from voting under state law – Section 241– because of their convictions. They argued that the law is tainted with racial animus.

NBC notes, "In asking the Supreme Court to weigh in, Harness and Kariem's lawyers point to the fact that the court in 1985 struck down a similar measure that was enacted in Alabama in 1901."

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Backing the plaintiffs, the Legal Defense Fund filed a brief that referred to the rule as a "Jim Crow law," according to CNN, that was put in place as a "deliberate and invidious scheme to disenfranchise Black People."

LDF's assistant counsel Patricia Okonta told the news outlet, "While the state is home to the highest percentage of Black Americans of any state in the country, it has not elected a Black person to statewide office since 1890."

The Guardian reports:

Sixteen per cent of the Black voting age population remains blocked from casting a ballot, as well as 10% of the overall voting age population, according to an estimate by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. The state is about 38% Black, but Black people make up more than half of Mississippi’s disenfranchised population.

Harness and Karriem's attorney, former United States Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., wrote, "Today, in 2022, many thousands of Mississippi's African American citizens are disfranchised by a provision that was enacted in 1890 to ensure 'a home government under the control of the white people of the State.'"

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CNN's full report is available at this link. NBC's report is here. The Guardian's report is here.