Category: Civil practice

Restoration of firearm rights after conviction: Findings and recommendations

We are pleased to publish an updated version of our report on state laws governing loss and restoration of firearm rights after a criminal conviction: Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Recommendations for Reform. This report, a version of which was originally published in June of 2025, finds that felony dispossession laws in most states extend well beyond what is necessary to advance public safety objectives, and that the process for regaining lost rights tends to be difficult to navigate if accessible at all. Our report argues that broad categorical dispossession laws are more vulnerable to constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment where a state does not provide an easily accessible process for restoring rights based on an individualized assessment of public safety risk. It makes a number of recommendations to this end, which are summarized at the end of this post.   Since our report was first published six months ago, there have been some changes in state laws warranting an update. More significant, however, in July 2025 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed to revive a long-dormant program under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) for restoring rights lost under the federal dispossession statute. Originally administered by ATF, the revived program will be administered by DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. We decided that this development was important to cover in what is otherwise a report on state law, because of the close relationship between state and federal dispossession laws. In a related development, DOJ seems to agree with our report’s argument that the existence of an accessible restoration mechanism may cure constitutional deficiency in a dispossession statute. Thus, the U.S. Solicitor General relied upon the renewed availability of administrative relief from federal restrictions under § 925(c) in arguing that the Supreme Court should decline to grant review in the case of a Utah woman federally dispossessed because of a dated conviction for food stamp fraud. See Brief for the Respondent in Opposition, Vincent v. Bondi, No. 24-1155, at 9 (Aug.11, 2025). For a review of Second Amendment cases on the radar of the Supreme Court this Term, see Kelsey Dallas, Second Amendment in the spotlight, SCOTUSblog (Nov. 13, 2025). The government’s position in the Vincent case noted above suggests that the ease or difficulty of restoring lost firearm rights may assume a greater role in Second Amendment jurisprudence going forward.  This gives the final recommendation in our report added currency: “States should use the occasion of the revival of a federal administrative firearm relief program to reconsider analogous provisions of their own restoration laws and policies.” In other words, states should ensure that individuals who have been dispossessed because of their criminal record, but who pose no public safety risk, are able to regain their rights through a reasonably accessible individualized process.     For ease of reference, here are the revised findings and recommendations of our report on Restoration of Firearm Rights after Conviction:  FINDINGS: Felony dispossession laws in most states extend well beyond what is necessary to advance public safety objectives. In more than two-thirds of the states, firearm rights are lost upon conviction for any felony, regardless of whether the conduct resulting in dispossession involved a risk to public safety, and loss of rights is indefinite. Only 13 states limit dispossession to violent crimes.  The process for regaining lost firearm rights is complex and difficult to navigate in many states. Each state operates under its own complex legal framework with overlapping federal requirements that create further legal jeopardy for inadvertent violations. Broad categorical dispossession laws are more vulnerable to constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment where a state does not provide an easily accessible process for restoring rights based on individualized assessment of public safety risk.   Regaining firearm rights is particularly challenging for state residents with out-of-state or federal convictions. Mechanisms for regaining firearm rights in a majority of jurisdictions are linked to the criminal case that resulted in dispossession, via pardon, expungement, or reduction of offense level. Those who do not live in the state where they were convicted may have no clear path to restoration, since many states do not give effect to extraterritorial relief. Dedicated judicial or administrative firearm restoration mechanisms operating in a minority of states are available to all residents and appear to best serve the public interest. Decoupling firearm relief from the state criminal case gives those with out-of-state and federal convictions a chance to regain rights where they reside. The prospective revival of a firearm relief program by the U.S. Department of Justice should encourage a close look at analogous state laws that will survive federal restoration of rights. Even if federal restrictions are lifted under this federal program, state restrictions may prevent individuals from fully regaining their firearm rights, especially if they no longer live in the state where they were convicted. In turn, expanded federal relief will encourage states to look carefully at their own laws, to determine whether state firearm restrictions based on criminal conviction should outlive federal ones.   RECOMMENDATIONS:  States should narrow the scope of their felony dispossession laws to correspond more closely to public safety risks raised by a person’s criminal conduct. It would be useful in this regard to study the experience of the states that dispossess only those convicted of serious violent crime, or that restore rights automatically to certain categories of those dispossessed.   States should provide a procedure for regaining firearm rights that incorporates an individualized public safety determination and that is easily accessible to all residents. Every state should make procedures for restoring firearm rights broadly available and easily accessible to all state residents consistent with public safety concerns, regardless of where their residents were convicted. The dedicated judicial relief provisions adopted by Oregon and Virginia appear to offer the broadest, fairest, and most accountable opportunities for relief from state firearm restrictions. The judicial relief provisions of the Model Penal Code: Sentencing and the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act, which authorize the sentencing court to relieve mandatory collateral consequences, also offer good models. The federal government should make relief from federal felony dispossession under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) broadly available to those who pose no present public safety risk. The Department of Justice (DOJ) should adopt regulations for its § 925(c) relief program that facilitate restoration of rights. As proposed, the regulations would exclude many people with minor convictions that are decades old, and impose burdensome procedural requirements even for those who are eligible.  States should use the occasion of the revival of a federal administrative firearm relief program to reconsider analogous provisions of their own restoration laws and policies. Depending on the standards and policies adopted by the federal government, a state may decide to incorporate federal relief into its own laws, as a number of states have already done, or it may decide that an independent regulatory scheme best serves the public interest.  Read more

Applying for federal disaster assistance with a criminal record

In addition to its lending and other programs in support of small businesses, the U.S. Small Business Administration provides long-term low-interest loans under Section 7(b) of the Small Business Act directly to individuals, businesses, and nonprofits in declared disaster areas. The current devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian in Florida — the subject of a dedicated new page on the SBA’s website — reminded us of some research we published two years ago, at the height of the pandemic, about how people with a criminal record were faring under the SBA’s COVID-related disaster relief program.  The answer initially was “not well.” Our research indicates that neither FEMA (emergency aid) nor the USDA (farm loans) impose criminal record restrictions on disaster assistance.  But the SBA does.  What’s more, the SBA’s restrictions are not formalized in a regulation but buried in operating procedures. The criminal history restrictions on SBA economic injury disaster loans (EIDL) under the CARES Act were initially even more restrictive than those that applied to its PPP relief, and they too were never formalized in a rule. The PPP restrictions were rolled back in response to public outcry and lawsuits, and the following year the COVID-related EIDL policy was also rolled back to disqualify the same limited population as the PPP itself (people in prison or on probation or parole, with pending felony charges, or with recent financial fraud and related convictions).  However, criminal record restrictions in the SBA’s general non-COVID lending programs, including its general disaster assistance programs, were not affected. Now that the SBA’s disaster assistance programs are no longer administered under the exceptional and well-publicized approach of the pandemic-related authorities, we thought it would be timely to take another look at how those programs — presumably including the one that specifically applies to Hurricane Ian relief — are available to people with a criminal record.     At the outset, it is worth noting that the federal government delivers immediate emergency aid to victims of disasters through FEMA, which appears not to ask about criminal record in any of its programs. FEMA refers individuals to the SBA for longer term assistance for physical and economic injury, but will resume some aid if someone is ineligible for an SBA disaster loan.  We don’t know how often this occurs, or what the process is for interagency coordination in such cases. A person will seek out an SBA disaster loan after the immediate stages of a disaster, to rebuild property or compensate for lost business income. By statute and rule, SBA is barred from making 7(b) disaster loans to persons who have been “convicted, during the past year, of a felony during and in connection with a riot or civil disorder or other declared disaster.” But the SBA’s operating policy on disaster loans is far broader than this narrow formal bar. In addition to barring assistance to anyone on parole or probation, the policy states the general principle that “It is not in the public interest for SBA to extend financial assistance to persons who are not of good character.” SOP 50 30 9 (3.6) (effective May 31, 2018) at p. 32. Like its policy on business lending, the SBA’s disaster assistance policy measures a person’s “good character” exclusively in terms of whether or not they have a criminal record. The SBA’s policy on disaster assistance disqualifies at the outset anyone who is “presently on parole or probation following conviction of a serious criminal offense.” Moreover, if an applicant discloses a prior criminal record in response to questions on the obligatory SBA Form 912, “Statement of Personal History”, the SBA must “make a determination as to the applicant’s character before a loan can be approved.” A potentially disqualifying record includes not only convictions but also diversions and guilty pleas and any form of probation at any time in the past, as well as unpaid fines and fees.  A detailed explanation about the records must be provided, and an application for disaster assistance can be processed without an FBI background check only if the disclosed criminal activity “is both minor in nature and was committed more than 10 years ago.” Otherwise, an FBI background check must be completed. (It is worth noting that the analogous SBA operating policy that applies to bank lending requires a background check only if the disclosed criminal activity is more serious than a misdemeanor.) Finally, after the background check is completed the SBA will make a determination of whether the person is “of good character” and therefore deserving of assistance.  The SBA’s practice of conducting background checks more broadly for disaster loans than for general small business loans is notable, especially in light of the lack of specific authority in the applicable authorizing statute. If minor criminal conduct (including misdemeanors and diversions) occurred within the previous ten-year period, or if criminal conduct is judged not to be “minor in nature” (a category not defined in publicly available documents as far as we can tell), it must be the basis of a fingerprint background investigation and may be the occasion for disqualification based on “unsatisfactory character.” That strikes us as a very tough standard to apply to disaster assistance, and will have particular applicability in urban settings that tend to have a large number of people with a criminal record. We plan to conduct further research into how the SBA is currently applying the restrictions in its operating policy on disaster assistance to those with a criminal record, and we welcome communications from anyone who has had relevant experience in this regard.       Read more

How Utah Got Automatic Expungement

Editor’s note: We are pleased to publish this fascinating account of how one state transformed its record relief system in little more than a year from a standing start, written by a person who had a central role in the transformation.      In March of 2019, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed HB 431, Utah’s Clean Slate law.  At the time, this made Utah the third state in the nation to pass a law automating the criminal record expungement process.  That law went into effect on May 1, 2020, but due to COVID-19, implementation efforts were delayed.  Several months later, implementation is back on track, and it is now anticipated that Utah’s state agencies will begin clearing court and repository records of non-convictions and qualifying misdemeanor convictions by the end of March. Preliminary estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of people across the state will have their records expunged automatically. What follows is a story about how Utah, one of the reddest states in the nation, came to adopt such a generous and efficient record relief system. As someone who was involved in that process from the beginning, I hope it will be helpful to others seeking to push their own states in that direction. The Case for Clean Slate Perhaps the most tragic thing about the number of people struggling with the collateral consequences of a criminal record is that, in many states, so many are eligible to clear their records but so few ever make it through the process.  The petition-based systems that exist in most states are costly, confusing, and cumbersome.  Utah is no exception. While Utah’s eligibility criteria for expungement are quite generous (allowing for multiple felony and misdemeanor records to be expunged), the expungement process is expensive and time-consuming.  In most cases, individuals must hire an attorney to understand the complex eligibility criteria and procedural requirements. Then they must apply for and obtain from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI), a “certificate of eligibility,” which expires after 90 days and involves additional cost. Then they must travel to several municipal courthouses across the state to file their paperwork in person, and potentially go back to court later for a full hearing before a judge if either the prosecutor or the victim objects. From start to finish, the process can take more than a year to complete.  As a result, only around 2,000 expungement petitions are filed statewide each year, which represents a small percentage of those who are eligible. The Path to Clean Slate Utah’s Clean Slate story starts with jobs.  In 2018, Utah’s unemployment rate was under 3%, one of the lowest rates in the nation.  I remember sitting in the back of courtroom, listening to a judge ask a defendant whether he worked.  The individual said no, and the judge said, “Well why not?  In this economy, if you can breathe, you can find a job.”  But that wasn’t quite true.  While jobs were plentiful, one thing was still keeping people out of the work force: criminal records. In December 2017, I was working as the Criminal Justice Advisory Council Director for Salt Lake County.  I received a phone call from the Department of Workforce Services, with a request to put on a criminal record expungement workshop for job seekers.  The Department explained that while Utah’s economy was one of the best in the nation, criminal records continued to be a huge barrier to employment. In my former life, I was a public defender, and had some experience with criminal record expungement work, since Utah has offered expungement on a fairly broad basis for several decades. I told the Department that I did not think that a workshop telling people how to navigate Utah’s complicated petition-based expungement process was going to be very effective, nor did I think that the target audience was likely to have the resources necessary to navigate it. But I was excited about the interest and wanted to do something.  Instead, I asked whether the Department would be interested in trying to do something different: putting on an “Expungement Day” event.  Unlike other expungement clinics, the goal of “Expungement Day,” would be to bring the lawyers, courts, criminal repository, and community partners into one room, and work together to try to streamline the criminal record expungement process into a single day, allowing anyone who showed up to leave with a clean record. This turned out to be an ambitious goal.  Representatives from the administrative agencies, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and people with records, gathered around one table.  While they worked in different parts of the same system, many of these people had not met before.  We talked about what barriers we would need to overcome to clear a person’s record in one day.  We’d need money.  Lots of attorneys.  Pre-screening.  Prosecutors.  Judges.  BCI on site.  Fingerprint pads.  Printers. We decided to do it.  With the help of the Utah Bar Foundation and a lot of private law firms, we raised almost $20,000, so we could provide eligible individuals with expungements that were totally free of charge.  We recruited volunteer attorneys and rented a big warehouse. Our goal was to get 50 clients to sign up.  I worked with the Mayor’s Communications Director to publish this story in our local paper.  “Call [this number] to sign up,” it said.  It was my office number.  A few hours later, my phone started ringing.  It didn’t stop for close to a month, and I couldn’t keep my voicemail empty.  In total, we received close to 500 phone calls from people across the state wanting help clearing their criminal records. I knew there weren’t enough legal aid resources in our state, but the need was eye-opening to me.  We registered dozens of people for the event and somewhat reluctantly, told people we would also try to accommodate walk-ins—anyone who wanted to come wait in line in case of a no-show or in case the volunteer attorneys finished early with a registered participant and had extra capacity. Expungement Day was on April 5, 2018.  It will probably continue to be one of the most impactful days of my professional career.  Hundreds of people lined up to receive services.  It takes about 6 hours to drive the length of our state, and some people had driven all night to attend.   Some people were able to leave with clear records that day, but a lot of people weren’t.  We had to turn hundreds of people away. There was so much momentum coming out of the event, that we wanted to do more.  By working together to examine the petition-based process from start to finish, we realized just how broken our system was.  I did a google search to try to figure out what else people were doing across the country.  That is how I learned about Sharon Dietrich, and Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate effort to automate the process.  Their bill hadn’t passed yet, but it looked likely.  I thought we should do it in Utah.  I asked Representative Eric Hutchings, who served on our County’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council, whether he would run the bill.  He said we would.  We took the issue to the rest of the Council, and there was overwhelming support. After a lot of meetings with the key agencies and several months of work, we built a coalition of advocacy groups on the right, center, and left.  With the help of the Crime and Justice Institute, and the newly formed National Clean Slate Initiative, we engaged our statewide Chamber of Commerce, which became a key supporter and champion for the bill as a way to increase our talent pool.  We worked with prosecutors and law enforcement officers all across the state, many of whom testified in support of the bill.  People with records showed up to share their stories. And Clean Slate passed.  Unanimously. Utah’s Clean Slate Law In a nutshell, Utah’s Clean Slate law automates the criminal record expungement process, meaning that an individual with a qualifying record will no longer have to petition the court for relief.  Instead, two government agencies—the Utah Administrative Office of the Courts and the Utah Department of Public Safety, will work together to identify eligible records, and expunge them automatically.  What this means in practical terms is that the record will no longer be available to the public, or to most state employers, and the person may respond to inquiries about their criminal history as if the conviction had never occurred. Utah’s Clean Slate law applies to non-conviction records, most class B and class C misdemeanor offenses, and class A drug possession offenses.  Individuals with these offenses will be eligible to have their records automatically expunged after a waiting period of 5-7 years, depending on the severity level of the offense.  In other words, individuals who qualify for Clean Slate relief will not have to pay or do anything.  The government will identify their criminal records and expunge them.  People with ineligible convictions, including any felonies, will still have to go through the petition process. Implementation Efforts and Challenges Our law isn’t perfect and is the product of lots of compromise.  One of the most heart-breaking compromises we had to make is that individuals with outstanding legal financial obligations in connection with the eligible case are not eligible for relief.  The numbers are not in yet, but I think this will disqualify thousands of people.  Pennsylvania just eliminated this requirement, and I’m hoping we will eliminate ours in the future. People ask me all the time how implementation is going.  It hasn’t always been easy.  For starters, we weren’t expecting a global pandemic to hit us in the middle of our implementation period.  As in other places, COVID-19 slammed the court system, slashed budgets, and overwhelmed a technology team that was faced with the challenge of turning a largely in-person process into a virtual one.  In the midst of this crisis, it’s sometimes been hard to keep Clean Slate a priority. We’ve also encountered challenges with court records.  In Utah, as in many other places, court records are case-based, not person based, so you have to match the cases to a person before you can determine whether someone is eligible for relief.  And we’re struggling with data integrity issues (old records, missing birth dates or dispositions, social security numbers or names that don’t quite match, or are off) that sometimes make it challenging to determine whether a case is eligible for automatic clearance. So, we have work still left to do.  But it’s possible. Code for America is helping the courts identify eligible records, and we are launching a website and public education campaign to raise awareness about the law and help people determine whether they have qualified. Having been through this journey from the beginning, I am a Clean Slate believer.  Utah is one of the reddest states in the nation, and support for this law was unanimous.  Our country is so divided, but this was an issue that everyone could get behind, because belief in second chances exists across ideologies and political party lines. Clean Slate is the product of a broken petition-based process that denies opportunity to millions nationwide.  It’s broken everywhere and record clearance processes won’t truly be meaningful and accessible to people until they are fixed.  So, if you’re thinking about making changes to your expungement law, you should think about Clean Slate. Resources: Click here for a detailed report on Utah’s Expungement Day and how it led to our Clean Slate legislative campaign. Click here to see a short video about Utah’s Clean Slate law. Click here for more information about the National Clean Slate Initiative. About the Author Noella Sudbury is a lawyer, former public defender, and policy advisor.  She is the owner and founder of Sudbury Consulting, LLC.  She works in Utah and nationally on policy issues, and offers technical assistance, research, and campaign support on criminal justice reform and access to justice issues. Read more

“The Many Roads to Reintegration”: A 50-state report on laws restoring rights and opportunities

We are pleased to release a new report describing the present landscape of laws in the United States aimed at restoring rights and opportunities after an arrest or conviction. This report, titled The Many Roads to Reintegration, is an update and refresh of our previous national survey, last revised in 2018. The report covers voting and firearms rights, an array of record relief remedies such as expungement and pardon, and consideration of criminal record in employment and occupational licensing. In each section of the report we assign a grade to each state for each type of relief. We collate these grades to produce an overall ranking on the nine categories that we graded. That ranking is reproduced below. We are encouraged by the amazing progress that has been made in the past few years toward neutralizing the effect of a criminal record since the present reform era got underway less than a decade ago. The last two years in particular have produced a bumper crop of new laws in almost every U.S. jurisdiction. Some of our top performers have been long-time leaders in promoting reintegration, including Illinois, Utah, and Minnesota. But some of the most progressive lawmaking has come from states newer to the field, like Nevada, Colorado, and North Dakota. These and the other states in our Top Ten set an example that we hope will inspire other jurisdictions in the months and years to come. The executive summary of the report is reprinted below. The full report is available in PDF and HTML formats. Voting, Record Relief, Employment & Licensing The report considers remedies for three of the four main types of collateral consequences: loss of civil rights, dissemination of damaging record information, and loss of opportunities and benefits, notably in the workplace.[1] Its first chapter finds that the trend toward restoring the vote to those living in the community—a long-time goal of national reform organizations and advocates—has accelerated in recent years. Further reforms may be inspired by the high-profile litigation over Florida’s “pay-to-vote” system, which shines a national spotlight on financial barriers to the franchise. This chapter also finds that systems for restoring firearms rights are considerably more varied, with many states providing relief through the courts but others requiring a full pardon. The second chapter deals with laws intended to revise or supplement criminal records, an issue that has attracted the most attention in legislatures but that has benefited the least from national guidance. It is divided into several parts, based on the type of record affected (conviction or non-conviction) and the type of relief offered (e.g. pardon, expungement, set-aside, certificates, diversion, etc.). The wide variety in eligibility, process, and effect of these record relief laws speaks volumes about how far the Nation is from common ground. The third chapter concerns the area in which perhaps the most dramatic progress has been made just since 2018: the regulation of how criminal record is considered by public employers and occupational licensing agencies. Legislatures have been guided and encouraged by helpful model laws and policies proposed by two national organizations with differing regulatory philosophies: The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, and the National Employment Law Project, a workers’ rights research and advocacy group. Regulation of private employment has also been influenced by national models, although to a lesser extent and more needs to be done in this area. This report makes clear that substantial progress has been made in the past several years toward devising and implementing an effective and functional system for restoring rights and status after arrest or conviction. The greatest headway has been made in restoring rights of citizenship and broadening workplace opportunities controlled by the state. The area where there is least consensus, and that remains most challenging to reformers, is managing dissemination of damaging criminal record information. Time will tell how the goal of a workable and effective relief system is achieved in our laboratories of democracy. Grading and Ranking the States After our discussion of each type of relief, we assign a grade to each state, D.C., and federal law. In an appendix, we collate these grades to produce a ranking of states and D.C. on the nine categories that we graded.[2] That ranking is below. Our grading judgments deserve a comment. Gabriel Chin’s introduction to the report describes the operational features of a desirable relief system: accessible, effective, coordinated, fair, and administrable. Because we have not studied the actual operation of the relief systems in the report, we cannot say for certain whether or to what extent any of them deliver on these five features. Our grades are based solely on the text of each state’s law, leaving more nuanced judgments to practitioners, researchers, and the law’s intended beneficiaries. Hopefully, these grades will challenge, encourage, and inspire additional reforms in the months and years ahead. National Ranking of Restoration Laws 1 2 3 4 5 5 7 8 8 10 10 12 12 12 15 15 17 18 18 18 18 18 23 23 23 26 27 27 27 30 30 32 33 34 35 36 36 36 39 40 41 42 42 44 44 46 46 48 49 50 51 Illinois California Utah Minnesota Connecticut Nevada Colorado Delaware New York North Dakota Pennsylvania New Hampshire New Jersey Oklahoma Massachusetts New Mexico Indiana Louisiana Nebraska Rhode Island Vermont Washington Arkansas Kentucky Ohio North Carolina Idaho Michigan Tennessee Missouri Wisconsin Georgia Mississippi Hawaii Maryland Arizona Oregon South Carolina Maine District of Columbia Kansas Montana West Virginia South Dakota Virginia Iowa Wyoming Texas Alabama Alaska Florida *On October 5, 2020, some grades and rankings were revised, based on further review for our new resource: “The Reintegration Report Card.” NOTES [1] This report does not cover the fourth main type of consequence: limits on personal freedom—including sex offender registration, civil commitment, and immigration consequences. Relief mechanisms for these are quite complex and built into the law of each issue. We offer a 50-state comparison chart for relief from sex offender registration, https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-state-comparison-relief-from-sex-offender-registration-obligations/. For resources on immigration consequences, see https://www.ilrc.org/crimes. With respect to the third type of consequence: loss of opportunities and benefits, this report covers laws providing relief for employment and occupational licensing (the two areas most subject to relief under state law), but does not cover housing, government benefits, or other opportunities. [2] The nine categories graded are: loss and restoration of the vote, pardon, conviction relief (felony and misdemeanor graded separately), judicial certificates, deferred adjudication, non-conviction records, employment, and occupational licensing. In determining these rankings, each of the nine categories was assigned equal weight, except that deferred adjudication and certificates of relief were each assigned 50% weight. We did not grade restoration of firearms rights because the laws were too varied to helpfully compare. Read more

CCRC research featured in Florida felony voting case briefs

Last week, we published our amicus brief in an appeal about the constitutionality of Florida’s system for restoring the vote to people with felony convictions.  We urged the Eleventh Circuit to affirm a district court decision that Florida’s “pay-to-vote” system is unconstitutional, relying on our research report showing that few states have as restrictive a scheme as Florida’s.  Other groups also weighed in, including 19 states and D.C. and several organizations that draw on CCRC’s research to argue in favor of the decision below.  CCRC board members Jack Chin and Nora Demleitner joined a group of 93 law professors who also argued in favor of the district court’s determination that Florida’s scheme is unconstitutional. These amicus briefs are part of high-stakes federal litigation over Florida’s 2018 ballot initiative, Amendment 4, which many expected would restore voting rights to more than a million people disenfranchised because of their criminal record, in some cases for crimes that occurred decades ago.  However, the state constitutional amendment has been interpreted by Florida’s legislature and supreme court to condition reenfranchisement on payment of all outstanding fines, fees, costs, and restitution, which threatens to drastically limit its anticipated reach. After a group of voters and organizations sued, the federal district court held that Florida’s scheme is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to all those who are unable to pay legal financial obligations (“LFOs”), a large percentage of the disenfranchised population.  (A preliminary ruling to this effect, which applied only to 17 individual plaintiffs, was upheld by a panel of the Eleventh Circuit at an earlier stage of the case).  The district court also held that conditioning voting rights on payment of fees and costs is unconstitutional under the Twenty-Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “any poll tax or other tax.” The district court ordered a process to allow people to register and vote unless the state can show precisely what each person owes and make a credible assertion that they have the ability to pay the amount.  However, the Eleventh Circuit stayed the order pending appeal and the Supreme Court declined to lift the stay, with three justices dissenting in a written opinion. The case is currently on appeal in the Eleventh Circuit, where the full court has agreed to hear the case en banc.  An amicus brief filed by Texas, joined by seven other states, asserts that “States across the country have similar rules [to Florida] for felon voting” and that the district court’s holding “called into question” what Texas deems “th[e] widespread practice” of “permitting re-enfranchisement [only] for felons who have paid their debts to society.” To rebut this argument, an amicus brief from a coalition of 20 U.S. jurisdictions, led by the District of Columbia and Illinois, draws upon CCRC’s 50-state survey of financial barriers to voting.  The brief makes clear that: “only two States in addition to Florida indefinitely deny the right to vote to any returning citizen who has not fully paid his or her LFOs. The vast majority of States have not imposed such a severe burden, and many in recent years have taken additional measures to expand the franchise and facilitate restoration.”  The brief contends, therefore, that the district court’s decision “does not forebode a reversal of the clear trend among the States toward re-enfranchisement of former felons or endanger the many kinds of state systems that promote restoration of the right to vote.”  (Our brief raises similar arguments.)  The states’ brief also argues that restoring the vote promotes reintegration and public safety, whereas restrictive laws like Florida’s disproportionately harm low-income individuals and  minority communities, without any evidence that they actually promote payment of debt.  Such harm is especially acute in Florida, which has not established a workable system for determining what, if anything, individuals owe. Another brief for four organizations (the Fines and Fees Justice Center, Cato Institute, R Street Institute and Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) argues that “Florida knows most of the plaintiffs will never be able to afford to pay these LFOs, and in many instances the state is unable even to calculate the amount owed, but conditions the fundamental right to vote on their payment.”  The brief asserts that Florida’s LFO requirement is “an extreme measure by a state aggressive in imposing LFOs on criminal defendants.  The state’s proliferation of LFOs has kept a substantial number of Floridians in poverty, and the collateral consequences of their felony convictions exacerbate their continued inability to pay their LFOs.”  Documenting how Floridians with felonies struggle to find and maintain employment, or earn enough income to pay off court debts, the brief cites among other things our research that Florida does not restrict private employers from inquiring about criminal history on job applications. Two members of CCRC’s board—Professors Jack Chin and Nora Demleitner, of the U.C. Davis and Washington & Lee law faculties, respectively—joined 91 other law professors on an amicus brief.  They argue that Florida’s demonstrated failure to implement Amendment 4 in a constitutionally-permissible fashion necessitated the district court’s “fair, necessary, and workable” remedy.  They also argue that even if the appeals court were to find that the district court exceeded its authority in crafting a remedy, Amendment 4 as a whole must be upheld, and unconstitutional aspects related to court debt should be severed. Additional briefs, including from election administrators and former federal civil rights officials, are available at the Brennan Center’s case page. The case is scheduled for oral argument in the court of appeals on August 18, ironically the day of Florida’s primary. Read more