A Nashville judge ruled Monday that convicted felons don’t have to have the right to own a gun before regaining their right to vote.
The ruling, issued just hours before the momentous local, state and presidential election day, contradicts the position of Tennessee’s top election officials, which came to light in early 2024.
A headline in the opinion, written by Judge Angelita Blackshear Dalton and published Monday, states: “A lifetime ban on firearms does not preclude the restoration of a person’s full citizenship rights under current law.”
Tennessee law states that a convicted felon must regain full citizenship rights to regain the right to vote. In January, Mark Goins, Tennessee’s election coordinator, told The Tennessean that these full citizenship rights also include the right to own a gun.
It doesn’t seem likely that Tuesday’s ruling will have a widespread effect on voting eligibility because Tennessee does not offer same-day voter registration.
Dalton’s ruling restores full citizenship rights to four people convicted of felonies who petitioned the court in August while still making it clear they cannot legally own a firearm.
Dalton had already ruled this way in September, but in early October the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office intervened to challenge her decision. Dalton’s order Monday targets the attorney general’s office after hearing arguments from them in late October.
“The permanent firearms bans resulting from violent crimes and drug offenses are not sufficient grounds to limit orders for restoration of citizenship rights to anything other than ‘full’ orders,” Dalton wrote.
Advocates say Tennessee’s voting rights restoration process is unnecessarily burdensome.
In July 2023, the Elections Division of the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office began requiring that those seeking to restore their voting rights in Tennessee must both go through the administrative process for restoration of voting rights and receive a pardon or a court order to have their full rights to citizenship restored. .
Elections department officials first revealed that the agency is considering including gun ownership among the “full rights of citizenship” during depositions in a federal lawsuit in late 2023. The Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog group, said in January that no other state may enforce such a policy.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMeAleft.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Judge: Felons can regain the right to vote without the right to own guns
