Federal judge makes it clear: Florida voting laws are racist

It’s not just that the Legislature made it a criminal offense to provide water or chairs to Florida voters wilting in the heat to cast ballots.

It’s not just that lawmakers threatened election supervisors with $25,000 fines for not maintaining constant supervision of ballot drop boxes in libraries and other easyto-access spots.

It’s not just that Florida tried to force volunteers conducting voter registration drives to read frightening language to the people they were trying to sign up.

Each of those provisions in a 2021 election law known as Senate Bill 90 is unconstitutional, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said Thursday in a bombshell of a ruling that blistered Florida’s elected leadership and Gov. Ron DeSantis. He did note that one provision (the mandate for third-party groups that register voters to read a scary passage warning them their registrations might not count) had been overturned, but ruled that the passage on “soliciting” voters in line to vote still shadowed common courtesies such as providing water, fans or chairs.

The law had other provisions, such as restricting the availability of mail ballots, that appeared to infringe on voters’ rights, he said — but groups bringing the lawsuit didn’t give him the evidence he needed to strike them down as well.

That’s nowhere near the whole story. Throughout his 288-page ruling, Walker built a case that Florida can no longer be trusted to pass voting legislation that isn’t fundamentally racist. The judge cited case after case of laws tailored to discourage Black Floridians from going to the polls, laws that have significantly hampered other groups of voters as well.

For example, lawmakers have taken frequent aim at groups that seek to register people to vote, threatening them with criminal charges if registrations weren’t turned in with lightning speed. They put restrictions on early voting after it proved popular with African-Americans, including a restriction on voting the Sunday before an election, an event known in Black churches as “Souls to the Polls.”

They’ve ordered periodic purges of the voter rolls, ostensibly to cull voters who had moved, died or were otherwise ineligible. Those efforts disproportionately targeted Black voters, Walker wrote, and were based on claims of fraud that for the most part don’t seem to exist.

‘“When the Florida Legislature passes law after law disproportionately burdening Black voters, this Court can no longer accept that the effect is incidental,” Walker wrote. “In the past 20 years, Florida has repeatedly sought to make voting tougher for Black voters because of their propensity to favor Democratic candidates.”

As a result, Florida should consider itself under “pre-clearance,” which requires election-related laws to go through a civil-rights review by the U.S. Department of Justice before they can take effect.

Stunning and humiliating

It’s a stunning and humiliating turn for Florida, made more astounding by the twisted legal path Walker took when enacting that provision. The U.S. Supreme Court largely ended the practice of pre-clearance in a 2013 ruling that found portions of the 1964 Voting Rights Act to be out of step with the times. The United States, the court ruled, has progressed past the brutal race-based voter suppression that marked the Jim Crow era.

Walker (who based his pre-clearance order on a different section of the Voting Rights Act) makes the case that — in Florida, at least — civil rights are sliding backward. That gives this ruling national implications. Many states have followed Florida’s deplorable lead, enacting strikingly similar laws aimed at ballot-access avenues favored by Black voters. They could soon find themselves hauled back under federal supervision as well.

Walker’s ruling could eventually be blunted by appellate courts that, for the most part, seem to have lost interest in voting rights protections. That can’t erase the stinging rebuke of Walker’s righteous wrath.

And it should have Florida officials nervous about the eventual fate of a law passed in March (SB 524) that sets up a statewide police force aimed at tackling election “irregularities,” something DeSantis and others insist was widespread in other states after the 2020 defeat of President Donald Trump, though the governor couldn’t provide conclusive examples, and in fact bragged of Florida’s 2020 performance.

The new law has other provisions: Once again, it targets third-party voter registration drives, though it did remove the harsh warning language that Walker found unconstitutional, and orders supervisors to more frequently maintain voter rolls, a move likely to result in more Black people losing their right to vote.

In the meantime, Walker noted, Republican lawmakers steadfastly ignored the “shadow candidate” scandal that used racially based deception to convince Democratic voters to split their vote, a move that favored GOP candidates.

Walker left one other glaring example out of his ruling: A new law which, while it doesn’t touch on election law, does support the conclusion that state Republicans see race-baiting as a path to political dominance.

The passage of the so-called “Stop WOKE Act” puts restrictions on discussion of race- or gender-based discrimination in workplaces and public schools, including a potential ban on the kind of diversity training offered by many major employers including Disney. Walker himself may be assigned a legal challenge to that law, too.

For now, Florida’s federal supervision, which will last for 10 years, only extends to the provisions of the 2021 law that Walker struck down. But the judge’s ruling sets the stage for other federal restrictions, here and in other states.

The harsh and unforgiving language of Walker’s ruling should also help Florida Republicans understand the damage they’ve done. In their efforts to blatantly disenfranchise Black voters, they have effectively refuted the myth that Americans have progressed past racism. Walker might be the first modern judge to expose the truth so brutally and comprehensively. But he won’t be the last.

Racism — whether it is born of bigotry or of naked partisan ambition — still thrives, and the nation must continue to refute it.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.