There were two significant advances in the drive to restore voting rights to felons this week, one in Florida and one in Washington state.

Advancement One:

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived an inmate voting rights case . The challenge was based on grounds that the state's law depriving felons of the right to vote discriminated against minorities. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to conduct a "searching" investigation.

The appeals court expressed no opinion on the merits of the inmates' claim, but said the lower court failed to consider evidence of bias in the state's criminal justice system. The appeals court noted, for example, that blacks make up about 3 percent of the state population but account for 37 percent of the ``persistent offender'' sentences handed down.

The law professor representing the inmates said the ruling has national implications. The Sentencing Project describes the ruling this way:

On July 25th, 2003, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the district court in the Washington state felony disenfranchisement litigation of Farrakhan v. Locke. While the district court had recognized that the state's disenfranchisement scheme resulted in a disproportionate impact on African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, the court had ruled that this impact was not related to the disenfranchisement provision itself. In overturning the ruling, the 9th Circuit stated that under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act a "totality of the circumstances" inquiry "requires courts to consider how a challenged voting practice interacts with external factors such as 'social and historical conditions' to result in denial of the right to vote on account of race or color." The court further held that "evidence of discrimination within the criminal justice system can be relevant to a Section 2 analysis."

Advancement Two

In Florida, the settlement of a lawsuit means 20, 000 to 30,000 ex-felons will regain the right to vote. There are an estimated 400,000 ex-felons in the state.