A coalition of advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Monday over a Virginia law that automatically stripped convicted felons of their voting rights shortly after the Civil War.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia, voting rights advocacy group Protect Democracy and law firm WilmerHale filed the lawsuit Monday against Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) as well as other state officials. The lawsuit alleges that the state violated a 150-year-old law that established the rules of Virginia’s readmission into the Union after the Civil War ended.
“Some of the most pernicious attempts to suppress the voting rights of Black citizens originated in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, but they have consequences that persist to this day,” Vishal Agraharkar, ACLU of Virginia senior supervising attorney, said in a statement. “Our constitution has enabled mass disenfranchisement through decades of over-criminalization, and it turns out that was illegal.”
The coalition is representing three individuals — Melvin Wingate, Tati Abu King and Toni Heath Johnson — as well as Bridging the Gap, an organization that offers aid to formerly incarcerated people. According to the lawsuit, Virginia is one of three states whose constitutions automatically disenfranchise all felons unless the governor restores their right to vote, for which felons in Virginia must individually petition the governor.
“As a minister, I’m a firm believer in second chances and being able to vote would be a chance for me to participate fully in my community,” Wingate said in a statement. “But since I was released in 2001, I’ve been unable to vote in five presidential elections, six midterm elections, and five Virginia gubernatorial elections.”
At the center of the lawsuit is the Virginia Readmission Act, which prohibited Virginia’s constitution from being “amended or changed to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the right to vote, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law,” according to the ACLU. Those felonies at the time included crimes of murder, arson, burglary and rape.
The law was amended a few years later that would disenfranchise people for an expanded list of crimes, which the plaintiffs say violated the Virginia Readmission Act.
“The case filed today alleges that by disenfranchising all people with felony convictions, Virginia’s constitution violates a Reconstruction-era law called the Virginia Readmission Act, one of several federal Readmission Acts that established the terms under which former Confederate states could regain representation in Congress,” WilmerHale partner Brittany Amadi said in a statement.
The Hill has reached out to Youngkin’s office for comment.

Thehill