Florida Election Law That Thwarts Voting Accessibility Heads into Legal Showdown

Florida’s SB 90, a law passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last Spring that attempts to make voting by mail more difficult, has since elicited a series of lawsuits from a number of advocacy groups including The League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida Conference of the NAACP, and Disability Rights Florida.

The challenges to the law center around its constitutionality, and now a federal judge has rejected efforts from the GOP to avoid a trial on the case. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker rejected the state’s motion for summary judgment in the matter, indicating he would need to hear arguments from both sides during a trial in order to rule on the law’s constitutionality, setting up a legal showdown between state GOP officials and those who believe that voting is a fundamental right for all and not a privilege for a few.

More on voting: Congress Introduces Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights (H.RES.757)

Access concerns

When the matter comes before the court, Judge Walker will hear arguments to attempt to determine what burdens if any the new provisions place on the Florida electorate, in proportion to the law’s purported purpose of quashing voter fraud.

SB 90 comes as a part of a larger push nationwide by GOP officials and state legislatures to make voting access more restrictive with their purported reasoning being to thwart voter fraud, an issue the Washington Post has reported to be minuscule. Instead of diminishing voter fraud, such measures tend to adversely affect the elderly, people of color, poor people, and the disabled, making it more difficult for them to access polling places and their constitutional right to enfranchisement. The bill was one of the 2021 legislative session’s most controversial bills.

The plaintiffs in the challenges allege a violation of constitutional rights, indicating that parts of the law violate the First Amendment rights of voters. Specifically, the plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the following parts of SB 90:

1. New restrictions on the availability and use of ballot drop boxes for vote-by-mail ballots. With dropbox availability limited to certain times and occasions, the plaintiffs contend this will negatively impact voters who work during the day and voters with disabilities who, due to time constraints or physical limitations, may not be able to access drop boxes in a timely fashion.
2. New requirements for third-party voter registration groups to provide disclaimers to people signing up to vote, measures the plaintiffs contend are intended to have a chilling effect on voter-registration drives. 
3. New restrictions on providing water and snacks to voters waiting in line outside polling places, a change that the challengers call unspecific, and a violation of voters’ First Amendment rights.  

Judge Walker has indicated in his statements regarding SB 90 that there is evidence to suggest that these new provisions place some undue burden on Florida’s electorate in exercising their constitutional right.

In his denial of summary judgment, Walker set the date for the trial for January 31, 2022, and quoted from a landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that required legislative districts within states to be equal in population:  

“The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.”

Regarding the possible outcome of January’s proceedings, it’s important to note that while Walker has generally decided for the plaintiff in similar litigation, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which oversees his decisions has frequently struck down the judge’s rulings. 

All eyes now turn to Florida and the showdown over SB 90 to see how future accessibility to voting might be affected nationwide, especially if challenges to SB 90 make their way all the way up to the Supreme Court.