This story was reported and written by VPM News.
A federal judge in Richmond partially struck down Virginia's felony disenfranchisement rule earlier this month, in a court decision that could make hundreds of thousands of people eligible to vote again — and have broader implications across the southern United States.
US District Court Judge John Gibney sided with Tati King and Toni Johnson in a legal challenge against Virginia's constitutional provision automatically stripping a person's voting rights once they are convicted of a felony.
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, argued the Virginia Constitution violates the federal Virginia Readmission Act of 1870, which let the state regain congressional representation after the Civil War. The 1870 law aimed to protect Black voters by banning the state from passing laws to disenfranchise citizens unless they were convicted of common-law felonies at the time (like murder and manslaughter).
King and Johnson said that their drug-related felony convictions — and many of today's disenfranchising, felony-level crimes — don't fall under the 1870 statute, meaning the state constitution violates the Reconstruction-era law.
Gibney agreed.
"For well over a century, the Commonwealth of Virginia has disobeyed a federal law designed to protect the right of former enslaved people to vote," Gibney wrote in his Jan. 22 opinion.
Gibney's court order says Virginia can't strip someone's voting rights away for felonies other than those under common law in 1870 — (1) arson; (2) burglary; (3) escape and rescue from a prison or jail; (4) larceny; (5) manslaughter; (6) mayhem; (7) murder; (8) rape; (9) robbery; (10) sodomy; and (11) suicide — starting May 1, 2026.
In his court opinion, Gibney noted that Virginia has adopted new constitutions "at least four times" since 1870 and that each change "disenfranchised people for reasons other than common-law felonies."
And some of those 1870-era felonies have since been abolished, formally or functionally, from the Code of Virginia.
King, a 54-year-old living in Alexandria, said in November that he filed the challenge to get his voting rights back and set an example for his grandchildren.
"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," he said in a statement after the ruling.
Vishal Agraharkar, a senior supervising attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia who's representing King and Johnson, called the decision "a historic ruling."
"It strikes down one of the remaining vestiges of Jim Crow in Virginia in its felony disenfranchisement regime," he said. "It paves the way for potentially thousands — hundreds of thousands, potentially — of Virginians to have their rights restored, and countless people in the future who will not lose their right to vote in the first place."
Agraharkar said he's not sure many Virginians are in similar circumstances as King and Johnson, but said "it's going to be a significant number" that could reach hundreds of thousands. He noted that The Sentencing Project — a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that advocates for responses to crime that minimize imprisonment — estimated in 2024 that about 260,000 people in Virginia can't vote because of felony convictions.
Civil liberties advocates have often pointed to the disproportionate impact of felon disenfranchisement on Black people. Agraharkar said The Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in 10 Black voters in Virginia can't vote because of a felony conviction.
Jared Davidson, counsel at Protect Democracy, also worked on the legal challenge. He noted that Gibney's ruling could open up lawsuits in other former Confederate states that agreed to similar terms to be readmitted to Congress after the Civil War.
"We're very excited by the prospect that this decision provides a pathway, not only to restoring the rights of Virginians, but also finally, fulfilling the promise of Reconstruction throughout the South," Davidson told VPM News.
The Boston-based firm WilmerHale also provided legal representation.
Former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares' office was defending Virginia officials when the case was heard in Gibney's courtroom. But the decision on whether to appeal is now up to Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones, who backed ending Virginia's disenfranchisement policy during his time in the House of Delegates.
Agraharkar said he hopes and expects Jones to let Gibney have the final say on the case and not appeal the ruling.
According to the Office of the Attorney General, Jones plans to make a public announcement on the case this week.
Gibney's order gives state officials until May to implement the ruling, a process that Agraharkar says will require providing guidance to election officials and impacted voters.
While the ruling is expected to make thousands of Virginians eligible to vote, a separate effort to overhaul the entire system is also underway.
Virginia is one of just three states where only the governor can restore voting rights for people with felony convictions. Former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin rolled back the automatic restoration process used by his three most recent predecessors (two Democrats and a Republican), instead evaluating applications and restoring rights on a case-by-case basis.
Public records show that the number of Virginians who had their voting rights restored after a felony conviction fell every year under Youngkin.
However, Virginians will soon vote on a constitutional amendment to take it out of the governor's hands and make the voter restoration process automatic for people who finish their felony sentences.
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