ACLU and Rutgers Champion Basic Rights, Citing Racial Discrimination

NEWARK -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic filed a petition today urging the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to rule that denying New Jersey citizens on parole and probation the right to vote violates universal human rights principles.

"The premise of a participatory democracy is simple: that citizens are able and encouraged to participate. The cornerstone of participating in our democracy is the right to vote," said Laleh Ispahani, Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU. "Ignoring the racial implications of denying blocks of people the right to vote violates basic democracy, fairness and human rights principles."

Of the approximately 100,000 parolees and probationers subject to the state's felon-disfranchisement law, more than 60 percent are African American or Latino, which the ACLU and Rutgers say is in large measure a consequence of racial profiling in the criminal justice system. As a result, the political power of the African American and Latino communities in New Jersey is diluted because they are disproportionately excluded from voting.

The problem of disfranchisement is widespread across the nation, the ACLU said. According to the petition 19 other states and the District of Columbia have disfranchisement policies that are less sweeping than New Jersey's; 19 have the exact same policies; and another 12 exclude even more categories of people than New Jersey. Only two out of the 50 states permit voting in prison, a practice embraced by nearly one-half of European nations. Notably, those states, Maine and Vermont, are far more racially homogeneous than most of the country.

The organizations are requesting that the Inter-American Commission investigate the claims made in their petition, declare the federal government and New Jersey and other states with similar post-incarceration voting restrictions in violation of universally accepted human rights standards, and most importantly, to urge all U.S. states to bring their felon disfranchisement laws into line with these standards.

"Although it is true that the IACHR cannot compel action by the state of New Jersey, we believe that the moral suasion of such an eminent hemispheric body would be taken very seriously by New Jersey officials," said Professor Frank Askin of Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic.

Earlier this year, the ACLU released Out of Step with the World, the first comprehensive international comparative study of felon disfranchisement policies. It examines other western democracies' policies, practices and legal precedents and the result is clear: the United States lags far behind the rest of the democratic world.

Established by the United States and Latin American countries in 1959 under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which sits in Washington, D.C., is expressly authorized to examine allegations of human rights violations by members of the OAS. The Commission is also authorized to conduct on-site visits to observe the general human rights situations in all 35 member states of the OAS and to investigate specific allegations of violations of Inter-American human rights treaties and other instruments. Its overall responsibility is to promote the observance and the defense of human rights in the Americas.

In order to petition the body, all domestic judicial avenues of redress must be exhausted. In this case, a challenge under the New Jersey Constitution to the state's disfranchisement law was rejected by the Superior Court Appellate Division and review was denied in March of this year by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The United States takes its international responsibilities seriously, specifically in relation to proceedings before the Commission. Recently, the United States has vigorously defended its position when challenged on such issues as the juvenile death penalty and the detention of detainees at Guantánamo.

The ACLU's new Human Rights Program is dedicated to holding the U.S. government accountable to universally recognized human rights principles. The Human Rights Program is charged with incorporating international human rights strategies into ACLU advocacy on issues relating to national security, immigrants' rights, women's rights and racial justice.

The petition is brought by Ispahani, Steven Watt and Ann Beeson of the ACLU Human Rights Program and Askin and Penny Venetis of the Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic. The lead petitioners are the New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP and the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey.

Out of Step with the World is available online at: www.aclu.org/votingrights/exoffenders/25663pub20060525.html

The petition to the IACHR is available online at: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/26731lgl20060913.html