BREAKING: A federal appeals court today upheld a Florida law that created wealth-based hurdles to voting. The decision denies voting rights to hundreds of thousands of people with past felony convictions. #Amendment4 brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…
The case, Jones v DeSantis, concerned Senate Bill 7066, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019. This law made voting rights for people with past felony convictions contingent on payment of all legal financial obligations.
It directly undermined Florida voters' overwhelming passage of the Voting Restoration Amendment 4 in 2018, which had restored voting rights to over a million people with past felony convictions.
We worked with @ACLU, @ACLUFL, and @NAACP_LDF to sue immediately after the governor signed the legislation. In May 2020, a district court struck down the law as unconstitutional, but the ruling was put on hold pending an appeal by the governor.
The appeal was heard by the full Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Today’s decision blocks hundreds of thousands of Floridians from registering to vote in time for the November election.
“This ruling is a defeat for voting rights. It tells Florida that it’s legitimate to put a price tag on voting. Worse, the Court says it’s okay to do so even when Black Floridians owe more than their white counterparts, and even when many can’t even determine how much they owe."
“By rejecting the district court’s ruling and upholding this law, the court has scored a win for voter suppression and blocked the way for hundreds of thousands of Floridians with past convictions to exercise their fundamental right to vote, in Nov. and beyond.” - @SMoralesDoyle
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