Author: CCRC Staff

Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center

CCRC statement on recent events

CCRC stands with those opposing police violence against black people and other forms of racism throughout society.  Black lives matter. Our organization promotes public discussion of how criminal records are used to hold people back in civil society.  Discrimination based on a record hits the black community harder than any other, thanks to the long history of officials using the criminal law as a weapon to keep black people marginalized and subjugated. Most recently, we have documented the Small Business Administration’s decisions to exclude many people from COVID-19 relief due to arrest or conviction, which disproportionately harms minority business owners…

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Florida felony disenfranchisement law held unconstitutional

This evening the district court issued its opinion in Jones v. DeSantis finding, as expected, that Florida’s system for restoring voting rights to those convicted of a felony is unconstitutional. The opinion is at this link, and its summary by the court is below. Additional details of the decision and the court’s order are reported in this article from the New York Times, and we will report further on the case, including next steps, in a few days. The State of Florida has adopted a system under which nearly a million otherwise-eligible citizens will be allowed to vote only if they…

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Upgrades to the Restoration of Rights Project

We are pleased to announce the completion of a major project to upgrade our flagship resource, the Restoration of Rights Project (RRP).  The RRP is a free on-line compendium of legal research that describes and analyzes the laws and practices relating to criminal record relief in the United States.  The improvements we have made will make it easier for our readers to gain both a snapshot and more detailed understanding of how record relief laws and policies operate within each of the 50 states, D.C., 2 territories, and the federal system.  They will also facilitate comparisons of how different states address…

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New efforts to channel federal relief to small business owners with a record

*UPDATE (7/7/20):  “SBA throws in the towel and Congress extends the PPP deadline” After Congress authorized hundreds of billions of dollars in funds for small business relief during COVID-19, the Small Business Administration (SBA) imposed restrictions on applicants with an arrest or conviction history.  These barriers, neither required nor contemplated by Congress, impede access to the two major relief programs for small businesses, nonprofits, and independent contractors during the COVID-19 crisis.  The two programs are the newly created Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the ramped-up Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. Three developments within the past week signal major pushback…

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Is SBA denying disaster relief based only on an arrest?

*UPDATE (7/7/20):  “SBA throws in the towel and Congress extends the PPP deadline” In response to COVID-19, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and expanded the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, appropriating hundreds of billions of dollars across these programs to assist small businesses affected by the pandemic and economic crisis.  As we have been pointing out in this space over the past five weeks, the Small Business Administration (SBA), which administers both programs, has imposed broad restrictions on access to relief based on arrest or conviction history, restrictions that were neither required nor contemplated by Congress.[1] Until…

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