By Lazaro Aleman
Riverbend News
On Friday, Sept. 11, the full US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta handed Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature a victory in the long-running legal battle over restoration of Florida felons’ right to participate in elections.
The court’s decision leaves Florida free to condition a former felon's right to vote on whether the individual has paid all the fines, fees and restitutions associated with his or her conviction prior to registration.
The ruling reverses a lower court’s decision that the state could not base a person’s right to vote on his or her ability to pay, which the lower court equated to a poll tax.
The higher court’s decision effectively prevents many of Florida’s estimated 100,000 or so ex-felons from voting this fall if they owe any fines or fees associated with their past felony convictions.
The League of Women Voters of Florida (LWV-F), one of the several groups championing the restoration of felons’ voting rights, called the Eleventh Court’s decision “disheartening.”
“This is a sad day for democracy,” LWV-Florida President Patricia Brigham said. “Floridians were clear when more than 64 percent of them voted in favor of Amendment 4 and elected to end Florida’s lifetime disenfranchisement practice.”
Amendment 4, as it appeared on the ballot in November 2018, was supposed to automatically restore the voting rights of people with prior felony convictions upon the completion of their sentence, with the exception of those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense. The definition of sentence, per the amendment, included prison, parole and probation.
Prior to the amendment’s passage, Florida had been one of a handful of states that barred felons from voting for life.
Following voters’ overwhelmingly approval of the measure, however, the Florida Legislature in early 2019 passed Senate Bill 7066, which DeSantis soon after signed into law.
SB-7066 codified into law the legislators’ interpretation of Amendment 4, which was that the measure was intended to require that felons pay off all their fines, fees and restitutions associated with their past convictions before they could register to vote. This despite the assertions of the amendment’s sponsors and legal experts that such was never the measure’s intent.
Ever since, the LWV, in conjunction with other voting rights advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, and Brenan Center for Justice at NYU, has been battling SB 7066 in the courts.
In May of this year, US District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee ruled in favor of the felons, finding the law that DeSantis and the Florida Legislature had passed amounted to an unconstitutional voting tax. The judge, moreover, ruled that the administrative system in place for felons to know what fines, fees and restitution they owed was so archaic and onerous as to make it impossible for the average person to navigate.
As soon as the judge issued his ruling, however, attorney for the state appealed the ruling to the 11th Court of Appeals, which in July temporarily halted Hinkle’s ruling and scheduled a full court hearing on the case in mid-August.
Subsequently, the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonpartisan nonprofit group that works to reduce the influence of big money in politics and to support unrestricted access to voting, filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the Eleventh Court’s stay on Hinkle’s order.
In mid-July, however, the US Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case, allowing the Eleventh Court to proceed with its hearing of the case, the decision of which was just issued.
The issue takes special relevance in light of the coming presidential election and Florida’s swing state status. It’s estimated that as many as 1.4 million individuals in Florida could be impacted by the court’s latest decision.
The LWV, in its press release, vowed to continue its works to ensure that as many eligible voters as possible participate in the coming election, including those whom it called “returning citizens.”