Voting rights battle goes to federal appeals court

ATLANTA — In a legal showdown over voting rights in the political battleground state of Florida, a group of federal judges asked probing questions Wednesday about how voting rights are restored for some former prisoners but not others.

At issue is whether Florida’s process of restoring voting rights to felons is unconstitutional. State officials defend their system, but critics call it arbitrary and unfair.

“Is voting an expression protected by the First Amendment?” Judge Darren Gayles asked during Wednesday’s oral arguments in the case.

Gayles was among a three-judge panel hearing the arguments at the U.S. Circuit Court of in Atlanta.

Florida’s system is not unconstitutional, and the way the state decides whether felons can vote again after their incarceration should be left to states — not the federal courts, Florida Solicitor General Amit Agarwal said during the hearing.

But Jon Sherman, senior counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Fair Elections Center, told the judges that Florida’s system is unfair.

“Florida’s practice is inconsistent with the values of a democratic government,” Sherman said.

In an interview after the hearing, he called it “a freewheeling, arbitrary system.”

Sherman is among lawyers representing a group of former prisoners. They 11th Appeals sued Florida Gov. Rick Scott last year after their applications were turned down.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that the state’s system is unconstitutional, with decisions possibly swayed by politics and racial factors. Walker ordered changes, but that decision was later blocked by the appeals court.

Scott and other Florida Republican officials appealed to the Atlanta-based appellate court, whose territory includes Florida, Georgia and Alabama. A spokesman for Scott has said that judges should interpret the law but not create it and that the governor will “never stop fighting for victims of crime and their families.”

As many as 1.5 million felons remain disenfranchised by the ban.