Trial News

The Eleventh Circuit has affirmed a preliminary injunction requiring Florida to allow a group of ex-felons to register and vote. The court agreed that a state law requiring them to pay all “fines, fees and restitution imposed as part of the sentence” before their voting rights are restored is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because they cannot meet that obligation. (Jones v. Gov. of Fla., 2020 WL 829347 (11th Cir. Feb. 19, 2020).)

In November 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot initiative popularly known as “Amendment 4,” which amended the state constitution to restore voting rights to ex-felons (excluding those convicted of murder or felony sexual assault) who had completed all the terms of their sentence. The Florida legislature then passed S.B. 7066, which implemented the amendment but interpreted it to mean that a precondition of re-enfranchisement was the payment of all “legal financial obligations” (LFOs). The state high court issued an advisory opinion agreeing with the legislature’s interpretation.

Seventeen ex-felons sued, alleging the LFO requirement was unconstitutional. New York City attorney Sean Morales-Doyle, who represents one of the plaintiffs, described how these cases fit within Florida’s history of limiting voting rights. “Until 2018, Florida permanently disenfranchised anyone convicted of a felony. Of the people in the United States barred from voting because of a felony conviction, about one in four was from Florida,” Morales-Doyle said. “When Florida voters passed Amendment 4, it was believed to be the largest enfranchisement in the United States since the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Yet by passing S.B. 7066, the Florida legislature severely undermined that intent.”

The plaintiffs’ cases were consolidated in the Northern District of Florida. Citing the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the state to allow the plaintiffs to register and vote if they could show that—if not for their inability to pay their outstanding LFOs—they would be eligible to vote under Amendment 4.

The state appealed, but the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction. The court found that the district court did not abuse its discretion by determining the plaintiffs had established the elements required to receive the injunction: they had a “substantial likelihood of success on the merits,” they would suffer irreparable injury without the injunction, the threatened injury to them outweighed the harm the injunction could cause the defendant, and issuing the injunction was in the public interest.

The Eleventh Circuit agreed that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits. Although it determined that the state has an interest in collecting revenue from fines, the court found that this interest is irrational when applied to the plaintiffs, who cannot pay. The court also found that the “denial of the opportunity to cast a vote that a person may otherwise be entitled to cast—even once—is an irreparable harm” and that it could not say that the district court was incorrect to determine that this harm outweighed the potential injury to the state of allowing 17 arguably unqualified people to vote.

Finally, the Eleventh Circuit agreed that the public interest in allowing voters to participate in elections supported granting the injunction. “Because the LFO punishes those who cannot pay more harshly than those who can . . . [U.S.] Supreme Court precedent leads us to apply heightened scrutiny in asking whether the requirement violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to these plaintiffs. When measured against this standard, we hold that it does,” the court wrote.

Morales-Doyle highlighted the decision’s significance, particularly because after Richardson v. Ramirez (418 U.S. 24 (1974))—in which the Supreme Court explicitly held that the “lifelong disenfranchisement of felons” is not an equal protection violation—courts have generally limited the clause’s application to criminal disenfranchisement cases.

“Under Ramirez, Florida’s original constitutional provision disenfranchising felons was lawful,” Morales-Doyle said. “But what the district court and Eleventh Circuit ruled here is that after Floridians voted to restore ex-felons’ voting rights, discriminating among people within that group on the basis on their wealth violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the equal protection clause. Wealth discrimination cases typically receive rational review, but the Eleventh Circuit said heightened scrutiny was appropriate because under Supreme Court precedent [M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519 U.S. 102 (1996)], wealth classifications are more closely scrutinized in the context of voting rights and punishment—both of which are implicated in this case.”

Florida has filed a petition for rehearing en banc but given the timing of the state’s mid-March presidential primary, Morales-Doyle said he would be surprised not to proceed to trial in April as scheduled to seek a final ruling on this question and other related claims. “The Eleventh Circuit has announced a constitutional principle. Unfortunately, state government leaders have declined to apply that principle beyond the plaintiffs to others in Florida, but they would be hard pressed to take that position after a federal court reaches a final judgment. Hopefully, that future ruling will offer protection and clarification for voters heading into the November election.” 

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