Florida ex-felons unlikely to vote in August primary

US Supreme Court won’t intervene, sending case back to 11th Circuit

Hundreds of thousands of Florida ex-felons likely won’t get to cast ballots in the state’s primary next month because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued Thursday.

The high court’s refusal to intervene means the case will go back to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. As many as 775,000 ex-felons potentially won’t be able to vote in the primary because the appeal court has scheduled Aug. 18, the day of the primary, for its first hearing on the case.

The issue could still be decided by the Nov. 3 general election in which Florida could pay a key role in deciding the presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. The deadline to register for that vote is Oct. 5.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented from the decision, for which the court did not provide a written ruling.

“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 dissent, adding that the court’s decision “continues a trend of condoning disfranchisement.”

Julie Ebenstein, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling “disappointing because many people won’t be able to vote in the primary next month, but we’re still hopeful that they will be able to do so in November.”

It’s the latest twist in a legal challenge to a 2019 Florida law requiring felons to pay fees, fines, costs and restitution to be eligible to vote. Voting-rights groups that filed the lawsuit argue that linking voting rights and finances amounts to an unconstitutional “poll tax.”

The state law, approved by the

Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, was aimed at carrying out Amendment 4 approved by Florida voters in 2018. The constitutional change restored voting rights to non-violent felons “upon completion of all terms of sentence, including parole or probation.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in May cemented his October preliminary injunction in which he decided the state cannot deny voting rights to felons who cannot afford to pay court-ordered financial obligations associated with their convictions.

He said state elections officials couldn’t possibly review the hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications that could arrive ahead of the state’s August primary and the November presidential vote.

DeSantis appealed Hinkle’s ruling, and in an unusual move, the 11th Circuit agreed to a full court review of the case.

Three-judge panels nearly always conduct initial reviews of appeals.

Whatever the final decision, elections experts have long said the idea that felon enfranchisement would help Democrats was not true.

A study of the 150,000 felons restored their rights by Gov. Charlie Crist between 2007 and 2010 found that most Black felons supported Democrats, but all other felons were slightly more supportive of Republicans, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The exact number of ex-felons affected by the case is unclear. Byzantine record-keeping among 67 counties and 20 circuit courts has been a key issue in the lawsuit, with attorneys arguing many ex-felons had no idea how much they owed and couldn’t feel safe swearing on a registration form that they no longer owed money.