Voting groups urge federal judge to throw out Florida law they call poll tax

TALLAHASSEE — Voting rights organizations urged a federal judge Monday to throw out a new Florida law which allows felons to regain their voting rights only after paying court-ordered fines, fees and restitution — barriers which could keep most of the state’s 1.4 million disenfranchised residents from casting ballots.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union told U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle that the law unconstitutionally hinges the right to vote on an ability to pay, which has sparked opponents to liken it to the segregation-era poll tax.

“The law serves no legitimate purpose,” said Julie Ebenstein, with the ACLU. “It won’t make more people pay; it will just let fewer people vote.”

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But Nick Primrose, deputy general counsel for Gov. Ron DeSantis, defended the law signed by the governor in June.

Primrose said it complies with requirements of Amendment 4, the ballot measure approved by voters last November to end the state’s more than 150-year-old law preventing people with felony records from registering to vote.

“This is not a case that should be decided on emotion or rhetoric,” Primrose told Hinkle. He added the law crafted by the Republican-controlled Legislature creates a “pro-voter process.”

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Testimony in Monday’s hearing, though, showed the state has an uneven record of compiling data about the amount of court costs and restitution individual felons may owe.

Records are even harder to obtain stretching back decades, or when a felon seeking to regain voting rights is living in one county and has to obtain information from another county — or out-of-state — about a debt owed.

University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith testified that in his analysis of court clerks’ data, more than 80% of people with felony records have outstanding legal financial obligations, leaving them ineligible to vote until these debts are paid.

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Smith said his research found that black felons tend to owe more than white felons and that because of income disparity between the races, blacks face even more challenges in meeting legal financial obligations.

Based on the analysis, Smith concluded that more than 1.1 million of the 1.4 million Floridians with felony records won’t be able to vote because of the state law. It’s a bitter blow to those who campaigned in support of Amendment 4 last year, some of whom rallied near the federal courthouse in Tallahassee while Monday’s hearing took place.

Several dozen demonstrators carrying signs reading “The debt was paid,” and “End wealth-based barriers to voting” said they will continue to fight for felons’ voting rights.

“They are making the ability to vote contingent on who can pay,” Melba Pearson, the ACLU’s deputy director in Florida, told the crowd gathered near the courthouse.

The federal lawsuit has been filed by the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. These groups argue the new law violates equal protection and due process provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

DeSantis had asked Hinkle to dismiss the lawsuit and also argued that any challenges to the new law should be settled in state court.

Much of the dispute centers on the interpretation of Amendment 4’s promise that felons could regain voting rights upon “completion of all terms of their sentence.” DeSantis and Republicans in the Legislature agreed this means payment of court-ordered financial requirements stemming from a felony conviction.

The governor has asked the state Supreme Court to rule on what it considers sentence completion and, if justices agree, it may bolster the state’s defense of the new law. That hearing, however, isn’t scheduled until Nov. 6, and any appeal to Hinkle’s eventual ruling also could delay a final decision on the status of the new law.

All that is prompting anxiety among many Florida Democrats who pushed for passage of Amendment 4 as a means to expand voter registration to felons ahead of the 2020 elections.

In his testimony, however, Smith, the UF political scientist, said there was no indication that felons regaining their voting rights tend to register as Democrats.

“I see no evidence of that,” Smith said.