Moses v. Goins

Overview

Overview

Protect Democracy, along with a team of attorneys from Arnold & Porter, are fighting to overturn Tennessee’s permanent felony disenfranchisement law, arguing that it violates Tennessee’s Constitution which guarantees equal protection under the law, due process, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and guarantee of free and equal elections.

Tennessee’s draconian and wide-ranging permanent felony disenfranchisement statute, which today prevents thousands of Tennesseans from ever voting again, is rooted in a tradition of discrimination and racism. The constitutional provisions authorizing such disenfranchisement were used for decades after the Civil War to discriminate and wrongfully prevent newly freed Black Tennesseans from voting. The disparate impact of this law can still be felt today.  

Tennessee has the second-highest rate of disenfranchised citizens in the nation, with over 470,000 of its citizens unable to vote due to felony convictions. This has had a disproportionate impact on Tennessee’s Black and Latino communities, where over 20% of eligible Black voters and 8% of eligible Latino voters are disenfranchised — the highest rate of felony disenfranchisement of Black and Latino voters in the country. 

The Plaintiff

The Plaintiff

Pamela Moses, a longtime and outspoken civil rights activist in Memphis, has a history of speaking truth to power. After reluctantly pleading guilty to a series of minor charges in 2015, Ms. Moses attempted to restore her voting rights in 2019. Unbeknownst to her, she was not eligible to have her rights restored under current state law. Nevertheless, because of a mistake made by the court clerk, Ms. Moses’ voting rights were temporarily restored. What happened next is the stuff of nightmares. As chronicled by The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others, Ms. Moses was prosecuted by an overzealous district attorney for what amounted to an innocent mistake, and one that someone else made. Refusing to take a plea, Ms. Moses was tried and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Thankfully, the judge ordered a new trial based on evidence not provided by the defense, and the new district attorney chose not to retry the case. Ms. Moses then took on a new challenge: transforming a pending petition to restore her citizenship rights into a full-scale constitutional challenge to the pernicious and unconstitutional felony disenfranchisement regime in Tennessee. After initially being litigated by private pro bono counsel, Protect Democracy took over as counsel in 2023.

Case Background

Case Background

The permanent disenfranchisement of Tennesseeans with felony convictions violates the State’s Constitution. It breaches the guarantees of equal protection, due process, free and equal elections, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Much like other states around the country, felony disenfranchisement disproportionately impacts Americans of color, particularly Black Americans. This violates both the guarantees of Equal Protection and Free and Equal Elections clauses found in the Tennessee Constitution. Moreover, when Tennesseeans are considering pleading guilty or going to trial they are not informed that they may permanently lose their voting rights, which violates the guarantee of due process. Like the Mississippi plaintiffs in Hopkins v. Hosemann, this case argues that Tennessee’s policy of permanent disenfranchisement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Tennessee Constitution.

This lawsuit is critical to fighting back against the nation-leading disenfranchisement regime in Tennessee:

In recent years, Tennessee has stepped up its efforts to criminalize voting and make rights restoration work more difficult. In mid-2023, the Secretary of State issued a legal memorandum making it exponentially harder for formerly incarcerated people to restore their voting rights. In late 2023, a district attorney north of Nashville indicted at least 10 people for voter fraud based on their efforts to have their voting rights restored, while promising more prosecutions to come. This follows a pattern of prosecutions in Tennessee, starting with the prosecution of Ms. Moses. In early 2024, the Secretary of State announced an extreme interpretation of a recent case to change the rights restoration policy to block any formerly incarcerated person unable to restore their right to possess a firearm from ever voting again.

Thousands of Tennesseans who have been convicted of a felony are being denied their fundamental right to vote and an equal say in choosing their representatives, despite having served their time and paid their debts to society. This case fights back against malicious attempts to distort the electoral process and intimidate would-be voters like Ms. Moses from participating in elections.

Case Documents

Case Documents