Testimony ends in lawsuit over 2023 law cracking down on voter registration orgs
Courthouse for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Credit: Michael Moline
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Testimony ended Tuesday morning in a constitutional challenge to a 2023 law imposing restrictions on voter registration organizations. While awaiting a ruling, these groups have stopped signing up new voters ahead of the general election in November.
Voter-rights advocates, state officials, political science experts, and canvassers testified in court hearings that started on April 1. Over the past week, attorneys for third-party voter registration organizations, or 3PVROs, have tried to demonstrate that the law discriminates against Blacks and Hispanics.
SB 7050 went into effect on July 1, 2023.
Meanwhile, attorneys representing the state have presented alternatives for the groups to register voters, including handing out voter registration applications with prepaid envelopes or letting voters fill out an electronic form on the Florida Department of State website.
“That would be a near-perfect substitute,” said defense attorney Mohammad Jazil.
The judge presiding over the case, Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, did not say when he would rule. Eight months remain until the general election, in which voters will pick the next president and representatives at the local, state, and national level.
Voter registration groups, including the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida State Conference of Branches and Youth Units of the NAACP, Equal Ground Education Fund and Alianza for Progress are challenging provisions limiting who can handle voter registration applications and the procedures for the organizations once they collect the forms.
The suit names as defendants Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the state’s 67 county supervisors of elections.
Proving discriminatory intent
Walker warned the plaintiffs’ attorneys that the standard for proving discriminatory intent by the Legislature had changed after recent decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. For example, they must focus on the legislative session in which the law passed and can’t use patterns from previous sessions, Walker said.
“I’m not saying that to disparage anyone,” the judge said.
Under the old law the groups had 14 days to turn in any applications before the registration period ended ahead of an election. Under SB 7050, the deadline is 10 days. The law also prohibits organizations from maintaining information about the voters.
Additionally, plaintiffs claim the law discriminates against noncitizens authorized to work in the country and people convicted of felonies who have had their voting rights restored because it bars them from handling voter registration applications.
Days after the law went into effect, Walker enjoined provisions preventing the retention of information and barring noncitizens from handling voter registrations. Even so, two noncitizen employees for Mi Vecino, a 3PVRO, testified on Day Two of the trial that the organization restricted their ability to handle voter registration forms because SB 7050 barred them from doing so.
Cynthia Slater, the Florida NAACP’s civic engagement chair, testified on Thursday that the civil rights group had stopped voter registration drives because of the law. Each violation could result in a $50,000 fine.
The injunction made it harder to analyze how the law could change the voter registration landscape in Florida, said Michael Herron, a professor of quantitative social science at Dartmouth College. The plaintiffs’ attorneys hired him as an expert witness, and he has produced previous studies about Florida’s restrictions on voter registration organizations.
“I am not observing the full force of SB 7050,” Herron said on Tuesday.
Both the plaintiffs’ attorneys and the defendants’ attorneys called state officials as witnesses. Tim VanderGiesen, chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, said on Monday that his unit is running active investigations against third-party voter registration organizations.
On Day Three of the trial, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said SB 7050 has produced a “dramatic” decrease in groups’ efforts to sign up new voters.
Although expert witnesses on both sides clashed on whether the law had yielded discrimination against Black and Hispanic voters, they agreed that those voters rely on 3PVROs at a significantly higher rate than do white voters.
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