The 6-3 decision lets stand a Florida’s court of appeals ruling that temporarily blocked a May decision that would have allowed many of the felons to vote. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan all opposed the unsigned majority opinion.
“This Court’s order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they are poor,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent.
“And it allows the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to disrupt Florida’s election process just days before the July 20 voter-registration deadline for the August primary,” she added. “Even though a preliminary injunction had been in place for nearly a year and a Federal District Court had found the State’s pay-to-vote scheme unconstitutional after an 8-day trial.”
Many states restore voting rights to felons that have served their sentences, but until recently Florida was one of a handful where felons were banned from voting for life. However, almost 65 percent of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences in 2018, except for those convicted of murder or sex crimes.
Florida’s Republican-led state legislature passed a bill last year adding requirements that felons seeking to restore their voting rights pay fees and fines associated with their arrests, which Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law. DeSantis declined to comment when Newsweek reached out to his office, as it was an ongoing legal matter.
Voting rights advocates quickly challenged the new law, arguing that it was not what the voters intended and is essentially a type of poll tax, an unconstitutional suppression tactic that has historically been used to prevent poor, disproportionately Black, people from voting. They also protested that many of the felons do not know what fees they might owe, and the state has no system in place to inform them.
In May, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle ordered the state to tell felons whether they are eligible to vote and what fees they owe within 21 days or allow them to register regardless of any outstanding legal debts. DeSantis appealed, and the appeals court agreed to stay Hinkle’s decision and hear the case.
The appeals court hearing is set for August 18, the same day as the state’s primary. The deadline for registering to vote in November’s election is October 5. The Supreme Court’s decision may have blocked hundreds of thousands from registering from the primary and could have a similar impact in November.
“My heart went out to the countless number of returned citizens who were looking forward to participating in an election maybe for the first time, or the first time in a long time,” Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told The Washington Post. “To see their hopes dashed like that, because of politics, that really brought me to tears.”
