Virginia: Arbitrary Voting Rights Restoration

Plaintiff: George Hawkins

Defendants: Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia, and Kelly Gee, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia

Case Status: The case is currently with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Oral arguments took place on May 9.

Case Summary:

Dreaming of the Ballot Box

In 2010, George Hawkins was arrested in connection with a shooting incident, convicted of a felony, and served 13 years in prison. Because he was 17 at the time, a juvenile, he has never been able to vote in his life.

Registering to vote was among the first things Mr. Hawkins dreamed of doing when he became a free man. Since his release in 2023, he has applied twice to have his voting rights restored. In both instances, his application was denied without any explanation. As Mr. Hawkins told the New York Times, “I don’t know what makes me ineligible, I don’t know when I could be eligible. I’m kind of free — like a second-class citizen. I don’t want to be a nonvoter for the rest of my life.”

Violating the First Amendment

By default, the Virginia state constitution revokes the right to vote from people convicted of felonies. Currently, that right can only be restored by direct application to the governor, Glenn Youngkin, who can approve or deny applications at his sole discretion, without any clear, objective criteria for qualification or any set timeframe within which applications will be decided.

Because Virginia law has created a path to restoration, that path to restoration must be administered impartially according to objective criteria. Without specific rules or criteria guiding these decisions, Governor Youngkin’s absolute power to decide which Virginians regain these rights opens the door to discrimination in the rights restoration process and violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. Supreme Court Precedents

A well-settled line of U.S. Supreme Court precedent dating back eighty-five years prohibits the arbitrary licensing of First Amendment-protected expression or expressive conduct because of the risk of viewpoint discrimination.

Given absolute authority to selectively restore voting rights to U.S. citizens with felony convictions, officials may grant or deny applications for reasons other than those officially stated or for no stated reason whatsoever, while secretly basing their decisions on speculation or information regarding an applicant’s political affiliations or viewpoints. This kind of information could be easily gleaned from an applicant’s prior First Amendment-protected expressions, such as voter registration records, online publications, and social media postings.

This is why conditioning the right to vote on the exercise of unfettered official discretion and arbitrary decision-making violates the First Amendment.

Plaintiff Profile:

George Hawkins is 33, a lifelong resident of Virginia, born and raised in Richmond.

At 17, Mr. Hawkins was arrested in connection with a shooting incident, convicted of a felony, and sentenced as an adult. Mr. Hawkins has always maintained that he did not commit the crimes for which he was convicted. “I’m not saying I was perfect,” he relates. “But at the same time, I had a 3.4 GPA, I was working at Burger King, and attending a barber school. Nothing about me said that I deserved the 15-year maximum sentence.”

After his release from prison, in 2022, says Mr. Hawkins, “I was turned down for over 50 jobs. I was putting in 10 applications a week and all I heard back was, ‘Your background, your background, your background, your background, your background…’”

Like many of the 12,000 Virginians leaving prison every year, Mr. Hawkins faced obstacles at every turn as he tried to reintegrate into his community and build an honest, productive life. While many returning citizens become discouraged or feel hopeless about ever regaining their civil rights, Mr. Hawkins found inspiration and motivation in overcoming the challenges he faced.

He started his own business, Right & Exact Transport, LLC, providing a variety of delivery and courier services, winning a major bread route contract from Bimbo Bakeries. His business now has several employees, and he is able to provide jobs to other returning citizens.

Mr. Hawkins volunteers with multiple nonprofit organizations, including The Humanization Project, Nolef Turns, W.E.G.O.D. in the Community, Inc. (Weaving Education Genealogy Occupation & Destiny), Virginia Justice Alliance, Prisoner’s Rights Clinic, Stop Shooting Movement, and Reform Alliance.

Mr. Hawkins was involved in a separate civil suit against the Virginia Department of Corrections due to substandard medical care he received while incarcerated, for which he received a settlement. Mr. Hawkins notes, “The judge in my lawsuit against the DOC said, ‘Continue to do all the good work you’re doing, George, and thank you.’”

“People ask me how I think it will feel when I finally walk into a voting booth,” muses Mr. Hawkins. “I think it’ll mean more to me to see other people voting who had given up. Like my friend: he’s got five kids, he works 12 hours a day, he’s paying taxes—and he’s given up on having a voice in his community. I want to see him go vote. I want to vote with him. I want to drive with him, like, ‘Bro, we got our rights back now, get in the car, we’re going to vote!’”

Read George’s story in his own words: Column: Virginia’s voting rights restoration system must be fair (The Virginian-Pilot, May 8, 2025)

Legal Background:

A Short History of Felony Disenfranchisement in Virginia

In Virginia, disenfranchisement for felony convictions is mandated by the state constitution, which says: “No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority.”

Under current rules, individuals seeking re-enfranchisement must complete an application and submit it to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Restoration of Rights Office, which conducts research on applicants and submits a non-binding recommendation to the governor, who then makes a final decision.

Reversing Nearly a Decade of Bipartisan Progress

Virginia’s last three governors, representing both major parties, utilized specific, objective, and neutral criteria, such as sentence completion, for restoring voting rights to Virginians with previous felony convictions. Starting in 2013, Governors McDonnell, McAuliffe, and Northam restored voting rights to over 300,000 Virginians based on specific, objective, and neutral criteria such as sentence completion. They used their authority under the Virginia Constitution to remove arbitrary decision-making from the process and create a uniformly administered, objective restoration system.

Governor Youngkin ended these policies soon after taking office in 2022, exercising his unlimited discretion under the Virginia Constitution to grant or deny each individual’s application for voting rights restoration.

Broader Impact:

Barring Otherwise-Qualified Voters from Civic Life

Virginia Governor Youngkin’s current restoration policy means that thousands of Virginians who are employees, caregivers, religious and community leaders, and taxpayers remain stripped of their voices in shaping the laws and institutions that govern their lives as they try to reintegrate into their communities, essentially relegating them to second-class citizenship even after they have served their time.

Leaving aside many well-documented studies showing that the ability to participate in the democratic process ultimately reduces rates of recidivism, disenfranchising a person for their entire life based solely on a past mistake is simply unjust and unreasonable. Virginians, and all otherwise-qualified voters across the U.S., who have served their sentences should be able to fully rejoin civic life, and people should not be permanently defined by their past mistakes.

Disenfranchisement By the Numbers

According to a 2024 study by The Sentencing Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for more humane responses to crime, an estimated 4 million Americans are ineligible to vote in 48 states (Maine and Vermont do not restrict voting based on criminal convictions, and Washington, D.C. does not disenfranchise people even while incarcerated) because of laws banning people with felony convictions from voting—about 1.7% of the voting-age population in the U.S.

In 2023, a Prison Policy Initiative study found that 122,500 Virginians were either behind bars or under supervision.
An estimated 169,573 Virginians remain disenfranchised after serving their complete sentences for felony convictions.
With an incarceration rate of 679 per 100,000 residents, Virginia locks up a higher percentage of its people than any independent democratic country on Earth.
In Virginia, African Americans make up 19% of residents but 54% of the prison population.
One in 22 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised in the U.S., a rate more than triple that of non-African Americans.
4.5% of the adult African American population in the U.S. is disenfranchised, compared to 1.3% of the adult non-African American population.