Federal judge restores thousands of Virginians' voting rights in historic ruling

RICHMOND, Va. – Today in a historic ruling, a federal judge found that Virginia’s Constitution broke federal law by stripping the voting rights of every Virginian with a felony conviction, paving the way for potentially hundreds of thousands of Virginians to have their voting rights restored.

“I am overjoyed at today's ruling and what it means for thousands of Virginians,” said Tati King, plaintiff in King v. Youngkin. “After so many years of fighting for my rights, I will finally be able to participate in our democracy and exercise my vote as an American citizen.”

King v. Youngkin, a class action lawsuit filed by ACLU of Virginia, Protect Democracy, and WilmerHale, took aim at Virginia’s practice since 1876 of disenfranchising Virginians with felony convictions. When the U.S. Congress readmitted Virginia’s representatives to Congress after the Civil War in the Virginia Readmission Act, it did so on the fundamental condition that Virginia was prohibited from depriving Virginians of the right to vote except as punishment for a very narrow set of felonies.

Just a few years later, Virginia violated the Act by amending its constitution to disenfranchise anyone convicted of any felony. Today, it is one of only three states whose constitutions permanently disenfranchise all people with felony convictions unless the governor restores their right to vote.

“Virginia’s government has blatantly broken the law for more than a century by disenfranchising everyone with a felony conviction – a violation that has disproportionately affected Black and Brown Virginians,” said ACLU-VA Senior Supervising Attorney Vishal Agraharkar. “Today, the Commonwealth is finally free of that Confederate legacy. We’re elated for the hundreds of thousands of Virginians whose voting rights will be restored thanks to today’s ruling.”

As part of today’s order, any Virginian whose voting rights were taken away because of a conviction for a felony that was not a common law felony in 1870 – for example, modern offenses like drug-related violations – will now have them restored.

“Virginia’s history is one of willfully suppressing the voting rights of Black citizens, and it’s shameful that it took a lawsuit to finally force the Commonwealth to uphold the law,” said WilmerHale Partner Brittany Amadi. “But it’s worth it to make sure that Virginia is once again beholden to its Readmission Act, and to safeguard Virginians’ access to the ballot box, as this decision did today.”

With an estimated 260,000 people in Virginia disenfranchised in 2024 as a result of a felony conviction, the impact of this ruling is significant both immediately and for every person convicted of a felony in the future who will no longer lose their right to vote.

“Our clients – and thousands of Virginians like them, past and present – served what amounted to a second sentence by permanently losing their voting rights even after they had served their sentences. Today’s decision means they can finally participate in the political process and that, going forward, untold numbers of Virginians will not be stripped of their fundamental rights in the future,” said Jared Davidson, Counsel at Protect Democracy.