Attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center [advocacy website] and New York City-based firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP [firm website] filed a federal lawsuit [complaint, pdf] Tuesday arguing that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement laws for people convicted of particular felonies, and the extensive process for restoring voting rights, is unconstitutional.

The suit alleges the Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for certain crimes was a disenfranchisement scheme carefully created to disproportionately disenfranchise black voters, and that the law violates the Eighth Amendment [text] prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment as well as Section 2 of the