NC Court of Appeals Blocks Ex-Felons from Voting

The NC Board of Elections instructed local election boards not to accept any new voter registration forms from former felons. 

By Cash Michaels –

The celebration was brief for over 56,000 ex-felons in North Carolina who had hailed a recent Superior Court ruling clearing the way for them to vote starting in next month’s primaries.

The NC Court of Appeals last week issued a temporary stay of that ruling, blocking any ex-felon who had not completed all required elements of their sentence from registering to vote until the appeal from Republican legislative leaders is resolved.

“The Superior Court has issued an injunction that is plainly irreconcilable with the North Carolina Constitution,” according to the GOP legislators’ appeal. “Under Article VI, Sec. 2, anyone convicted of a felony may not vote ‘unless that person shall be first restored to the rights of citizenship in the manner prescribed by law.’ The Superior Court held unconstitutional the ‘manner prescribed by law,’ … meaning that felons serving sentences outside of prison now have no lawful means of regaining their voting rights and thus remain disenfranchised.”

Anticipating that an appeal would be granted quickly, the NC Board of Elections instructed local election boards not to accept any new voter registration forms from former felons.

Plaintiffs in the case, Community Success Initiative v. Moore, haven’t wasted much time either. Last week, they asked the State Supreme Court to take the case from the state appellate court, hoping that if it does, it would overrule the appellate court order.

“Plaintiffs seek discretionary review from this [Supreme] Court given the exceptional importance and urgency of the appeal, and of Legislative Defendants’ Petition for a Writ of Supersedes, which has the potential to create immense confusion before the May 2022 primary election and cause substantial and irreparable harm,” wrote lead plaintiff’s attorney Daryl Atkinson of Forward Together in his brief submitted to the Supreme Court.

The case, formally known as Community Success Initiative v Moore, grew out of a lawsuit filed in 2019, arguing that North Carolina ’s felony disenfranchisement laws were unconstitutional because they were originally instituted to keep Black people from voting. The judicial panel voted 2-1 that the 50-year-old law, which made former felons who completed their sentences ineligible to vote, was racist because it made them pay the state fees before they could regain their voting rights.

Plaintiffs in the case won in 2021, only to have the NC Court of Appeals and NC Supreme Court temporarily restrict the ruling only to ex-felons who registered to vote between August 23 and Sept. 3, 2021, in time for the November elections.

That left approximately 56,000 ex-felons legally stranded who couldn’t meet that temporary restriction, until the recent Superior Court panel rule in their favor.

Political observers say Republican legislative leaders want the 50 year-old law enforced in order to keep the 56,000 forms felons off the voting rolls for the November 2022 elections.