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When 64% of Florida voters voted in 2018 to automatically restore voting rights to people with past felony convictions (with exceptions for certain crimes), they adopted a clear policy: once a citizen has paid the price and served their sentence, they should re-enter society and participate fully, and that includes having the right to vote. This is of enormous importance—an estimated 1.4 million Floridians, or close to 10 percent of the citizen voting-age population in that state, were eligible to have their voting rights restored under this amendment.
Despite this clear, bipartisan message, the Florida legislature then worked overtime to thwart the will of the voters. The legislature passed a law requiring people with past felony convictions to pay all fines, court fees and restitution before they can get their voting rights restored.
This effectively disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of people—and we believe it is unconstitutional. Roughly 80% of Floridians whose voting rights were supposed to be restored have outstanding fines and fees associated with their sentencing. Many owe thousands of dollars that will take years, if not decades, to pay off. This effectively establishes a wealth standard in Florida—if a citizen has enough money to pay the bill, they can vote. Otherwise, no chance.
One of our clients, Bonnie Raysor, was released from prison after serving 15 months behind bars, and she is now employed as an office manager. Nevertheless, under her current payment plan, she will be paying fines and fees associated with her past conviction until 2031. In other words, if the Florida legislature got its way, Bonnie wouldn’t be able to vote for another 11 years, even though she’s otherwise eligible except for her inability to pay.
We’re going into this trial with optimism: the federal district court granted an injunction in this case six months ago, to put the legislature’s new requirements on hold pending a trial, and that decision was upheld on appeal by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The Circuit Court decision said “equally guilty but wealthier [people with past felony convictions] are offered access to the ballot while [people like Bonnie] continue to be disenfranchised, perhaps forever.”
Crucially, the federal judge in the case recently granted our motion for class certification, meaning that CLC is now representing ALL people with past convictions in Florida, and any decision in this case will apply to all Floridians who would otherwise be eligible for rights restoration, but for their ability to pay off their fines and fees (not just our few original named plaintiffs).
In other words, the outcome of this trial will affect the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of people in Florida—and it will establish an important standard for review of similar rules in other states.
In addition to protecting the rights of voters, there are several other reasons I think this case is noteworthy.
First, due to COVID-19, the trial will be conducted remotely via web cameras. We’ve already argued in court remotely: CLC Vice President Paul Smith gave oral arguments via telephone last month, and, in a win for fair maps, the court subsequently upheld Michigan’s right to move forward with its Independent Redistricting Commission. However, having a full federal district court trial remotely is going to be a cutting edge legal experience. We have already heard that the Administrative Conference of the U.S. and others will be watching this experiment in technological innovation closely.
Secondly, this case has drawn support from across the political spectrum. Right-leaning think tanks Cato Institute and R Street Institute, together with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, filed a friend of the court brief in support of our position. Charles Fried, a CLC board member who served as Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, has also written that the Florida legislature is unforgivably thwarting peoples’ chance at redemption. Many conservative groups have been active in supporting the restoration of voting rights to citizens with past convictions for economic reasons: given the large number of people with felony convictions in the US population, they believe it is important that they be fully reincorporated into society and the work force in order to become productive members of society.
Finally, the Florida legislature’s action unfortunately fits into a troubling nationwide pattern, where state legislatures have acted to ignore the expressed desires of voters, often for narrow political gain. We’ve seen this recently in Missouri, where the legislature is working to gut redistricting reforms passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2018. We’ve seen a similar situation in Utah, too, where the power of Republican legislators to gerrymander was thwarted by the voters in a 2018 ballot measure, only to have the legislature try and undo it. In South Dakota, the legislature actually declared an emergency to go into post-election session in response to an ethics initiative passed by voters—the “emergency” was that the legislators didn’t like the new ethics rules! This is a trend we are fighting nationwide, and it is something we all should be paying attention to.
Stay tuned for more news about securing the right to vote in Florida. We’re hoping that the principle that financial status should not determine who can vote will be affirmed this week in court.
Sincerely,
Trevor Potter
President, Campaign Legal Center
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