Friend,

Trust is hard to build. Especially in Jacksonville, Florida, where Sheila Singleton and Rosemary McCoy live. You have to walk a lot of staircases, get past a lot of fear.

But that does not deter McCoy, 63, Singleton, 59, or the handful of volunteers they have recruited to their small voting outreach and advocacy organization. They ply the corridors of bus terminals, stand outside grocery stores and knock on doors to convince people to register to vote. Every day, they make progress against skepticism and people who are too mistrustful, too scared or too busy just trying to get by to believe that their voice can make a difference.

That’s why, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 90 (SB 90) in May, in a “Fox News exclusive,” live-streamed event that excluded all other media, McCoy and Singleton decided that they had endured enough. SB 90 is modeled off the broad, restrictive and unnecessary voting legislation cropping up in 2021 state legislatures from Texas to Georgia in the wake of historic voter turnout in 2020. 

Among other things, SB 90 requires civic organizations engaged in voter registration activities to provide misleading information to voters that the organizations “might not” submit their registration application on time. This disclaimer will make the trusted voter relationship work McCoy and Singleton have long done to advance voting rights in Florida even harder.

That is why their organization, Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters Corp., filed a lawsuit challenging SB 90. The complaint, filed in June on behalf of the organization by Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, challenges the law’s misleading disclaimer and disclosure requirements. It alleges that the law is void because of its vagueness under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, that the disclaimer is government-compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment, and that it prevents organizations from exercising their expressive and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

“We are working so hard to earn trust,” McCoy said of their voter registration efforts. “And when we are out in the field, we see that often people don’t believe the system works for them. We are out there encouraging them, talking about issues, educating them on civic engagement, and this right here, it just throws a wrench in everything we are trying to do. ... Now the individual is looking at the canvasser and saying, ‘Wait a minute, you are telling me that you might just throw my registration away? So why should I give you this? Why should I bother at all?’”

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center