The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a challenge to Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting by individuals convicted of specific crimes.
Challengers argued the ban is rooted in the racial animus of the Jim Crow era after the Civil War when some states enforced racial segregation.
The Supreme Court declined to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision from last year that upheld the ban.
The new decision in Hopkins v. Watson came in an unsigned order on Jan. 27. No justices dissented. The high court did not explain its decision.
The lead petitioner was Dennis Hopkins, a Mississippian who completed the sentence he received for an unspecified disenfranchising offense. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson was the respondent….