On January 22, 2026, a WilmerHale pro bono team led by Partners Brittany Amadi and Robert Kingsley Smith, together with Protect Democracy Project and the ACLU of Virginia, secured a landmark ruling in King v. O’Bannon, that will restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians who were disenfranchised for a prior felony conviction in violation of federal law. 

On January 22, 2026, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that Article II, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution violates the 1870 Virginia Readmission Act. The Virginia Readmission Act is a federal statute enacted at the end of Reconstruction to readmit Virginia’s delegation to representation in Congress, and it contains a “fundamental condition,” which prohibits Virginia from ever amending its Constitution to disenfranchise voters except as punishment for conviction of a crime then recognized as a felony at common law. 

This ruling is the culmination of years of collaboration between WilmerHale, Protect Democracy Project, and the ACLU of Virginia, examining the historical misuse of felony disenfranchisement to suppress the political participation of Black citizens. The firm represented Tati Abu King and Toni Heath Johnson, Virginians who lost their voting rights due to non-violent drug convictions that were not criminalized at all in 1870. 

In its ruling this month, the District Court certified a statewide class, granted summary judgment, and entered a permanent injunction effective May 1, 2026 that prevents Virginia election officials from disenfranchising otherwise-eligible voters for conviction of any offense that was not a felony at common law in 1870. 

The WilmerHale team included Brittany Amadi, who argued the motion to dismiss, Fourth Circuit interlocutory appeal, and summary judgment, Robert Kingsley Smith, Tom Saunders, Jason Liss, Nick Werle, Nitisha Baronia, Jane Kessner, Medha Gargeya, Dylan Reichman, Brandon Roul, and several former colleagues. 

“Virginia’s history is one of willfully suppressing the voting rights of Black citizens,” Amadi said. “It was worth the fight to ensure Virginia once again complies with its Readmission Act obligations and to safeguard Virginians’ access to the ballot box.”