The law was originally enacted, with slightly different phrasing, in Section 6 of the
Enforcement Act of 1870. The statutory text was revised in 1909 and in 1948, when it became Section 241 of Title 18 of the
U.S. Code. Conspiracy against rights was initially invoked against vigilante groups like the
Ku Klux Klan that acted to prevent recently-emancipated
Black Southerners from exercising their rights granted by the
Reconstruction Amendments in the aftermath of the
American Civil War. The legislative intent of the statute was aimed towards election offenses which interfered with the exercise of the
Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments. As the law does not define new rights nor does it elaborate on the range relevant rights or privileges, courts have generally interpreted that the attempted deprivation of a broad range of rights falls under the scope of the statute. The
Supreme Court would later note in
United States v. Price (1966) that it was "hardly conceivable that Congress intended §241 to apply only to a narrow and relatively unimportant category of rights." Section §241 violations are charged as
felonies with the possibility of fines up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to ten years, The statute also allows for harsher penalties (including
life imprisonment or the
death penalty) if the conspiracy either attempts to cause or results in death, kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse. Charges of conspiracy against rights were formerly shaped by the statute's legislative intent and limited via Supreme Court decisions, such as in
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876). The law has long been invoked in federal prosecutions of
federal elections offenses, concerning abrogation of the
right to vote, but has been more recently applied to state or local elections with federal components, as well as by some courts in elections solely at the state or local level. While the Supreme Court has held that the right to vote in state and local elections is constitutionally protected, it has not explicitly ruled on the applicability of §241 to such elections. A 2018 report by the
United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission referred to the
Chinese government's attempts to suppress overseas protests and acts of expression critical of the
Chinese Communist Party as a conspiracy against rights. == Common law intent requirement==