Supreme Court Allows Challenge to Virginia’s Felon Voting Ban to Proceed

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Virginia’s attorney general seeking to dismiss a legal challenge to the state’s lifetime ban on voting for people with felony convictions, allowing a federal lawsuit to proceed that could have far-reaching implications for voting rights in the South.

The case, filed last year by two disenfranchised voters, argues that the state’s policy violates the Virginia Readmission Act, an 1870 federal statute that set the terms for the former Confederate state's reentry into the Union. The law prohibits Virginia from denying. . .