It was sadly predictable when a panel of the liberal, activist 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that prison inmates in Washington state are entitled to vote.
The judges reasoned that denying the inmates’ “voting rights” amounted to racial discrimination, because blacks make up a disproportionately high percentage of the prison population.
But refreshingly, a larger panel of the same federal court has now overturned that ridiculous ruling.
The court said Washington state may continue to deny the vote to prisoners. The law forbidding inmates to vote was not based on their race but on their criminal acts, the court noted.
To challenge the voting ban, the court said, inmates would have to prove the criminal justice system discriminated deliberately, not just that there was “a disparity in the racial make-up of the prison population,” The Associated Press reported.
Crime – especially crime serious enough to warrant a prison sentence – carries an obviously high price, both to the victims and to the perpetrators. Part of that price, appropriately, is the loss of criminals’ voting rights. Americans may differ on whether that is appropriate, or on whether the loss of voting rights should be permanent. But those are matters for lawmakers to decide. An activist court should not engage in racial mischief to extend undeserved rights to inmates.