FRANK A. KAUFMAN, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, residents of the State of Maryland, all of whom have been convicted of and never pardoned for one or more crimes, seek injunctive and declaratory relief against the Administrative Board of Election Laws of the State of Maryland and the Baltimore City Board of Supervisors of Elections, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343. Plaintiffs assert that the provisions of 3 Md.Ann. Code art. 33, §§ 3-4(c), 24-14, as amended, ch. 299, §§ 1-2 [1974] Laws of Maryland 1353-54, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because they single out certain convicted felons for the deprivation of the "fundamental" right to vote. Plaintiffs also allege that those Maryland statutory provisions are unconstitutional because they constitute cruel and unusual punishment inflicted upon those convicted of felonies, and further contend that those provisions are void for vagueness. Additionally, plaintiffs contend that those statutes have been arbitrarily and thus unconstitutionally administered. Defendants have filed a motion to dismiss which, because the record contains affidavits and discovery documents in addition to pleadings, has been converted to a motion for summary judgment under Federal Civil Rules 12(b) and 56. That motion was held sub curia by this three-judge Court, empanelled pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2281, 2284, pending the filing by the Supreme Court of the United States of its opinion in Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24, 94 S.Ct. 2655, 41 L.Ed.2d 551 (1974).

I.

Before dealing with the substantive constitutional issues posed herein, this Court notes at the outset that serious justiciability problems exist as to all but one of the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs Charlotte Lane, Banks and Little have apparently been convicted for offenses which constitute "infamous" crimes disqualifying them from voter eligibility at the time this suit was instituted. However, none of those plaintiffs claim to have ever attempted to register to vote, and for that reason may not be persons who have yet been deprived of their right to vote. Moreover, under the 1974 amendments to Maryland's voter registration law, plaintiffs Charlotte Lane and Banks would appear now entitled to register. Plaintiff Richard Lane has not only never attempted to register to vote, but has not alleged that the offenses for which he has been convicted disqualified him from voter eligibility even under the more restrictive provisions of state law existing at the time this case was instituted. Plaintiff Long does assert that he has previously attempted to register as a Maryland voter. However, it is not clear that either under the previous law or under the law as recently amended Long is disqualified from registering to vote. Plaintiff Thiess asserts that he was on at least one occasion denied the opportunity to register as a voter. Thiess has been convicted of two "infamous" crimes, forgery and burglary. Since Thiess has never been pardoned by the Governor of Maryland, he is seemingly presently ineligible to vote in the State of Maryland. Accordingly, as to Thiess, a justiciable controversy exists, at the least in the context of defendants' pending motion for summary judgment in which all factual inferences must be assumed in favor of plaintiffs.

II.

The contention that the Maryland statutes depriving convicted felons of their right to vote contravene the mandates of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been fully answered by the Supreme Court's decision in Richardson v. Ramirez, supra. In that case, the Supreme Court ( 418 U.S. at 34, 94 S.Ct. at 2658, 41 L.Ed.2d at 556) upheld the provisions of the California Constitution and of California's implementing statutes disenfranchising persons convicted of infamous crimes. In his opinion in that case, Mr. Justice Rehnquist wrote ( 418 U.S. at 54, 94 S.Ct. at 2671, 41 L.Ed.2d at 571) that "the exclusion of felons from the vote has an affirmative sanction in § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment," and held ( 418 U.S. 56, 94 S.Ct. at 2671, 41 L.Ed.2d at 572)

* * * that the Supreme Court of California erred in concluding that California may no longer, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, exclude from the franchise convicted felons who have completed their sentences and paroles.

Plaintiffs' counsel has candidly conceded that Richardson v. Ramirez represents the final word upon the Equal Protection claim now before this Court. That concession is compelled.

III.

Plaintiffs also claim, as indicated above, that the felon disqualification procedures of Maryland law constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." In his concurring opinion in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 282, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), in which the Supreme Court held the death penalty as then administered proscribed by the Eighth Amendment, Mr. Justice Brennan observed:

Since the Bill of Rights was adopted, this Court has adjudged only three punishments to be within the prohibition of the Clause. See Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, [ 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793] (1910) (12 years in chains at hard and painful labor); Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 [ 78 S.Ct. 590, 2 L.Ed.2d 630] (1958) (expatriation); Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, [ 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758] (1962) (imprisonment for narcotics addiction). * * *

Among the cases cited by Mr. Justice Brennan, only Trop v. Dulles would appear arguably to buttress plaintiffs' contention that political disenfranchisement is unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishment." In Trop, Mr. Chief Justice Warren concluded ( 356 U.S. at 103, 78 S.Ct. at 599) "that the Eighth Amendment forbids Congress to punish by taking away citizenship" and indicated (at 101, 78 S.Ct. at 598) that the Eighth "Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

Unlike the penalty of expatriation, the penalty of disenfranchisement is one specifically recognized by the Fourteenth Amendment, an amendment enacted subsequent to the Eighth. See Richardson v. Ramirez, supra 418 U.S. at 54, 94 S.Ct. at 2671, 41 L.Ed.2d at 571. In addition, Mr. Chief Justice Warren's words in Trop suggest a marked difference in severity between total political expatriation and the more limited deprivation of the right to vote. Of expatriation, the then Chief Justice wrote ( 356 U.S. at 101-102, 78 S.Ct. at 598):

* * * There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights, and presumably as long as he remained in this country he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so because he is stateless. Furthermore, his enjoyment of even the limited rights of an alien might be subject to termination at any time by reason of deportation. In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.

This punishment is offensive to cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress. He knows not what discriminations may be established against him, what proscriptions may be directed against him, and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated. He may be subject to banishment, a fate universally decried by civilized people. He is stateless, a condition deplored in the international community of democracies. It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious. [Footnotes omitted.]

As the Court noted in Richardson v. Ramirez ( 418 U.S. at 55, 94 S.Ct. at 2671, 41 L.Ed.2d at 571), it may be that modern legislators should conclude that the concept of disenfranchisement is "outmoded, and that the more modern view is that it is essential to the process of rehabilitating the ex-felon that he be returned to his role in society as a fully participating citizen when he has completed the serving of his term." Be that as it may, as a Court, we cannot conclude that such disenfranchisement as has been decreed by the State of Maryland is a punishment so grossly disproportionate to the crime as to be proscribed by the Eighth Amendment.

IV.

Additionally, however, the question arises as to whether the term "infamous crime" itself is so vague that it offends the "notions of fair notice or warning" to defendants and fails to provide the "reasonably clear guidelines for law enforcement officials and triers of fact" referred to by Mr. Justice Powell in Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 572-573, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (1974). That can hardly be said of the Maryland statutes in question in this case in view of the currently existing "laundry list" of crimes issued by the Attorney General.

V.

VI.