A second Nashville judge has maintained that disenfranchised Tennesseans can restore their voting rights, counter to a state election rule that would have made them ineligible.
In 2023, Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins announced that the state election commission would begin requiring people with prior felony convictions to restore their right to own a gun in order to restore their right to vote. The rule would permanently disenfranchise a large group of potential voters, since most felonies come with a lifetime firearm ban.
The rule has sparked a wave of appeals from the state attorney general’s office, challenging judges that approved voter restoration petitions without applying the rule.
The election commission instructed those involved in the case to vote provisionally during the Nov. 5 election, which means their votes were held until the commission could confirm their voting status. Although some were given the green light to vote before polls opened that day, the state election commission declined to say if any of their votes were eventually counted, citing pending litigation.
Judge Thomas Brothers had initially restored the rights of two people — one who voted provisionally, and one who didn’t.
Ruling from the bench on Friday, Brothers maintained his original order.
The new election rule came as a surprise to Judge Brothers during oral arguments from Assistant Attorney General Zachary Barker.
“It’s not the state’s position that you have to be able to bear arms in order to be able to vote, is it?” Judge Brothers asked, nearly a half hour into the state’s arguments.
“Your Honor, that is the state’s position,” Barker said.
Barker cited State v. Johnson, a Tennessee Supreme Court Case which found that a person does not automatically regain the right to own a gun when their citizenship rights are restored. He argued that because a person needs “full citizenship rights” in order to regain the right to vote, people unable to own a gun should also be unable to vote.
Attorney Keeda Haynes with the nonprofit Free Hearts represented petitioners in two recent cases. She argued that when the legislature spelled out the conditions under which a person could never restore their voting rights, it did not include this group of people.
“The attorney general’s interpretation, if it was accepted, would totally disqualify so many individuals from voting simply because they cannot restore their firearm rights, a restriction that was not intended by the legislature,” Haynes said. “Do you know how many people that would disenfranchise?”
The judge ultimately denied the state’s request to amend his order. Another Nashville Judge, Angelita Dalton, made a similar ruling when the state appealed her order, restoring the voting rights of four other petitioners who Haynes represents.
Barker has filed nearly a dozen appeals attempting to reverse orders that restore voting rights against the state’s requirements, according to copies WPLN News obtained through a records request.
Haynes represents most of those voters whose rights were challenged by the state, including clients who had initially appeared pro se, meaning they represented themselves for the court.
“When we saw that the attorney general’s office had filed these motions, we didn’t think that it was fair for pro se individuals to have to go up against the army of the attorney general’s office,” Haynes said. “They want to continue to deny people the right to vote and suppress the vote here in Tennessee.”
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