Class Action Challenging Voter Suppression in Tennessee Survives Motion to Dismiss

Natasha Baker, Staff Attorney - Equal Justice Under Law

On March 30, 2022, federal Judge William L. Campbell, Jr. of the District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee largely denied a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of state officials, who were sued because of the state’s unconstitutional process for restoring the right to vote for persons with felony convictions. 

Under Tennessee law, anyone convicted of a felony after 1981 is stripped of the right to vote. The result of this policy is that more than 9% of the total voting age population of Tennessee – and more than 21% of African-American voting age population – cannot vote.  Tennessee has the second highest rate of disenfranchisement among African-Americans in the United States and the highest rate of disenfranchisement of Latinx voters. In 2006, Tennessee changed its law to create a process allowing those who had completed their sentences and paid their court costs and restitution to restore their right to vote, but the procedures are so convoluted as to make it essentially impossible to regain the right to vote. The process is so convoluted that applicants can end up back in prison over errors in applying.

Latoya was repeatedly told, “Well, the class felony you have, you won’t be ever able to vote.” She persisted, for fifteen years, until she finally succeeded. Photo Credit: Campaign Legal Center

The suit alleges that the process for obtaining a Certificate of Restoration of voting rights lacks the fundamental safeguards required to ensure procedural due process: access to a neutral decision-maker, a decision on the facts, a written statement of reasons for a denial, uniform eligibility rules, and an appeals process. Tennessee's voting rights restoration process is also the only one in the nation that requires the applicant to be current on child support to be eligible. Despite more than 365,000 Tennesseans having completed their entire felony sentences, including probation and parole, only about 3,400 people have successfully obtained Certificates of Restoration since 2016 – less than 1%.

In 2020, the Campaign Legal Center, Equal Justice Under Law, Free Hearts, and Baker Donelson filed a putative class action suit challenging this arbitrary rights-restoration process, in TN NAACP et al. v. Lee et al., Case No. 3:20-cv-01039. If successful, more than 450,000 Tennesseans with felony records would have access to a fair, uniform, and appealable process to seek restoration of their voting rights. 

The Campaign Legal Center shepherds people through the systemic barriers, but is also working to change the system overall.

Defendants moved to dismiss all seven of Plaintiffs’ claims; Judge Campbell dismissed only one claim, a National Voting Rights Act claim based on deficient notice (the NVRA has a pre-litigation notice requirement). Judge Campbell also found that organizational plaintiff TN NAACP had standing on all claims because of the drain on the organization’s resources in having to navigate Tennessee’s error-ridden rights-restoration process. Judge Campbell dismissed Defendants’ argument that such injury didn’t create standing because voting rights restoration falls with TN NAACP’s organizational mission, quoting a Sixth Circuit case that held that “within-mission organizational expenditures are enough to establish direct organizational standing.” Judge Campbell also denied Defendants’ argument that the Eleventh Amendment rendered Defendants immune from suit because Plaintiffs have alleged ongoing violations of federal law and seek prospective injunctive relief.

The case now proceeds to a case management conference and the start of discovery. There is still a long road ahead, but the path to restoring the right to vote for hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans just got clearer.