Federal judge grudgingly rules for DeSantis in elections law challenge

TALLAHASSEE — A federal judge reluctantly closed the door on allegations that key parts of a 2021 Florida elections law were unconstitutional after an appeal court overruled him on the issue.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued an order after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year overturned a ruling in which he found the law improperly discriminated against Black voters. The Atlanta-based appeals court sent the case back to Walker to address two major issues.

Walker, in his order Thursday, criticized the appeals court for “reweighing” facts in the case. But he entered a judgment in favor of the state, concluding that plaintiffs had not met a legal test for showing that the changes in the law “unduly burden” First Amendment and equal-protection rights.

“As this court previously found after a lengthy, two-week bench trial, the state of Florida has, with surgical precision, repeatedly changed Florida’s election code to target whichever modality of voting Florida’s Black voters were using at the time,” Walker wrote. “That was not this court’s opinion — it is a fact established by the record in these cases. Even so, following the state of Florida’s appeal, this persistent and pernicious practice of targeting the modalities of voting most used by Florida’s Black voters has apparently received the stamp of approval in this (11th) Circuit.”

The issues involved parts of the law that imposed new restrictions on mail-in ballot drop boxes and voter-registration groups.

It required boxes to be manned by employees of supervisors of elections and limited their use to early-voting hours. Also, it required voter registration groups to return completed applications to elections supervisors in the counties where applicants live and imposed a 14-day deadline for submitting the forms.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law (SB 90) in 2021 as GOP leaders across the country pushed to make voting changes after former President Donald Trump made false claims about widespread election fraud in his loss to Joe Biden.

Voting rights groups and other plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the measure, and Walker issued a decision in March 2022 that blocked disputed changes in the law. A three-judge panel of the appeals court in April 2023 overturned major parts of Walker’s ruling.