Appeals court upholds North Carolina felony disclosure law for candidates

The Lewis F. Powell Jr. federal courthouse in Richmond is home to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. (Photo: Ned Oliver/ Virginia Mercury)

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that a North Carolina law requiring candidates to disclose felony convictions is constitutional, upholding the lower court's decision Thursday.

North Carolina state law requires any candidate for federal office to disclose whether they are a convicted felon and if so, to provide the basic details of their conviction and subsequent restoration of citizenship rights. Candidates that fail to do so are not eligible to be placed on the ballot.

The challenge was brought forth by Siddhanth Sharma, 27, a resident of Wake County who entered the Republican primary election for North Carolina's 13th Congressional District in 2023 and challenged the requirement that he disclose his felony history as violating the Qualifications Clause of the Constitution as well as his First Amendment rights.

Sharma was convicted in 2016 and 2018 for possessing a stolen firearm and stealing firearms from a gun show, respectively, as well as related counts of possessing firearms as a convicted felon.

His challenge was dismissed by the district court after which he appealed and subsequently refiled as a candidate, submitting the required felony disclosure form. Sharma received 614 votes in the primary, or about 0.7%. Brad Knott, the Republican nominee, won the race in the general election.

Writing for all three judges on the panel, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III found that the Constitution's "broad grant of authority" to states on the oversight of elections allows for such a disclosure requirement.

"The state is using the requirement to emphasize in a modest and restrained manner that lawmaking and lawbreaking are, to put it gently, in tension," Wilkinson wrote. "The felony-disclosure requirement simply allows voters to reach their own conclusions on a distinction that is, at its core, the very essence of the rule of law."

He noted that candidates' felony histories do not appear on the ballot, and as such, do not act as an additional qualification for office or barrier to candidacy. The notice-of-candidacy form, while public, is difficult to access and not readily downloadable from the state election website.

"If prospective candidates possess a felony history, they may still appear on the federal ballot, regardless of whether their full citizenship rights have been restored," Wilkinson wrote. "Likewise, the felony-disclosure requirement did not derogatorily brand Sharma for his political viewpoints."

Wilkinson also decried that North Carolina courts have been "flooded with dozens of challenges" to its election laws in the last five years, writing that constant litigation is "not conducive to the most efficient administration of elections."

"We understand that many of these challenges are reasonably grounded in the law, and their gravity should not be understated," Wilkinson wrote. "At the same time, the constant pull to the courtroom leaves state election officials frequently operating in a provisional state, never knowing if and when their procedures will be overturned."

The judges upheld the dismissal of the challenges to the felony disclosure law and remanded the case back to the district court for the dismissal of a separate challenge to the state's address disclosure law as moot.