A federal judge in Florida ruled on Thursday that parts of the state’s year-old electoral law were unconstitutional and racially motivated, and banned the state from making similar changes to its laws over the next decade without federal government approval.
The sharply worded 288-page injunction issued by Federal Court Judge Mark E. Walker in Tallahassee marked the first time a federal court had struck down key elements of the wave of voting laws enacted by Republicans since the 2020 election. . Finding a pattern of racial bias, Walker relied in his ruling on a little-used legal provision to impose unusual federal restrictions on how a state makes laws.
“For the past 20 years, the Florida legislature has attacked the voting rights of black voters,” Walker wrote in the decision that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Walker quoted the attacks as “part of a cynical attempt to suppress the turnout among their opponents’ supporters. The law doesn’t allow that.”
Judge Walker’s decision is sure to be appealed and likely to be quashed by either the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which tends to lean conservatively, or the Supreme Court, which overrides the federal government’s jurisdiction. to intervene in state has greatly restricted electoral law.
Republicans in Florida immediately disapproved of the decision. Speaking in West Palm Beach, Governor Ron DeSantis called the ruling “performative partisanship” and predicted a turnaround on appeal.
“There’s an old saying in the law,” said Mr. DeSantis, who has a law degree. “If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, crush the table. Well, this is the legal equivalent of knocking on the table.”
The ruling targets parts of the law that restricted the use of drop boxes, imposed strict rules on voter registration organizations, and banned some forms of aid for Floridians waiting in line to vote. Judge Walker’s Order Blocks Making Florida changes in those three positions for 10 years without federal sign-off.
Even if fleeting, Judge Walker’s decision represents one of the most aggressive legal sides against Republicans in the heated battle over voting rights that followed President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. as Democrats and their allies embark on a tough legal strategy, relying on federal voting protections reduced by the Supreme Court.
In his decision, Judge Walker denounced previous Supreme Court rulings on voting issues and essentially challenged the judges to overturn his decision.
“Without explaining itself, the Court has allowed its fully court-designed prudential rule to trump some of our most valuable constitutional rights,” the judge wrote.
Judge Walker, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012, spared little rhetoric by stating that Republicans were trying to restrict Black Floridians’ access to votes. He described Republican lawmakers as “conflicting or nonsensical reasons” for the bill, arguing that they were motivated fundamentally by a partisan drive to win elections.
“Florida has repeatedly tried to make voting more difficult for black voters because of their tendency to favor Democratic candidates,” he wrote.
Judge Walker’s decision pointed to comments from state lawmakers during the floor debate describing voters as “lazy” for failing the polls.
Republican lawmakers “trotted out one of the oldest racial tropes known to man in response to concerns about the loss of minority voting rights,” Judge Walker wrote.
Wilton Simpson, the Republican president of the Florida Senate, said in a statement that the ruling was “deeply unprofessional, inaccurate and inappropriate for an officer of the court.”
The state’s Democrats, who were out of power, welcomed the decision but remained wary it might not appeal.
“It’s been a rough few years for those of us who think politicians shouldn’t make it harder for people they don’t like to vote, so today is a big deal,” said Raymond Paultre, executive director of the Florida Alliance, a nationwide network of progressive donors. “The fear is it’s going to the 11th Circuit and they’re in line with what Republicans want.”
With his ruling, Judge Walker placed a relatively obscure element of the 1965 Voting Rights Act at the center of the legal debate over federal voting rights protection.
For decades, the law required numerous jurisdictions across the country, especially in the South, to approve the amendments to the voting law with the Department of Justice. But in 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated the preclearance rules in a case known as Shelby County v. Holder.
Judge Walker’s decision put Florida under federal restrictions, taking advantage of Section 3 of the law. The provision, known as a “bail-in,” allows judges to impose additional federal oversight of electoral law if states or local governments are found to be repeat offenders in racial discrimination cases, said Travis Crum, a law professor. at Washington University in St. Louis.
Understand the struggle for voting rights in the US
Why is voting rights a problem now? In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, millions of people have embraced voting in person or by mail, especially among Democrats. Spurred on by Donald Trump’s false claims about mail ballots in hopes of undoing the election, the GOP has pursued a host of new voting restrictions.
Courts have made sparing use of the bail-in provision. Before the Florida ruling, New Mexico and Arkansas were the only states ordered by judges to submit to preclearance requirements, both decades ago. A few provinces and cities have that too, Professor Crum said.
Some Democrats have tried to persuade courts to use bail-in requirements for voter identification laws and reclassification cards in North Carolina and Texas, but federal judges have rejected it in significant cases.
The strategy risks taking voting rights cases to the Supreme Court, where the Conservative majority could further weaken the Voting Rights Act.
“From a realistic perspective, it’s unlikely that the 11th Circuit or Supreme Court would agree with the court that Florida had racially discriminatory intent,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor and expert on the subject. area of suffrage. “There is a lurking fear that the same court that ruled Shelby County could rule that bail-in is unconstitutional.”
Thursday’s ruling confirmed one of several legal objections to voting laws passed by Republican-led lawmakers last year. Voting rights groups and Democrats have accused Republicans of using laws that disproportionately target black voters and other communities of color to gain a partisan advantage.
Similar arguments were made in Georgia. There, voting rights groups argued that new restrictions on postal voting would give Republicans a head start by targeting black voters, who vote predominantly Democratic. But experts note that the legal theory used by Judge Walker may not be shared by other judges.
“All things being equal, if Florida law is willful discrimination, Georgia law should be willful discrimination,” said Jonathan Greenbaum, chief counsel to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “But there’s no guarantee that our Georgia judge or the judges in the Texas case will look at it the same way.”
Judge Walker has previously rebuked Florida’s election laws, often using harsh language against the state’s Republican leaders. In 2018, he ruled that officials in 32 counties with Puerto Rican populations must provide Hispanic voting materials — and referred to how voting rights cases before him were beginning to resemble the movie “Groundhog Day.”
Mr DeSantis has repeatedly dismissed a number of courts as politically biased and insisted that the policies of his administration and the legislature will be upheld by more conservative appeals courts.
“In the state and federal courts in Tallahassee, we usually lose when there’s a political component to it, but in the appeals court we almost always win,” Mr DeSantis said last fall after an appeals court allowed a ban. . on school mask mandates to stay in place, overturning a lower court’s ruling.
