Voting Advocates Challenge Florida’s Latest Voter Suppression Law
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On May 24, Elias Law Group attorneys representing the Florida NAACP, Equal Ground Education Fund, Voters of Tomorrow Action, Disability Rights Florida, Alianza for Progress, Alianza Center, UnidosUS, and Florida Alliance for Retired Americans filed a lawsuit challenging a new voter suppression law, SB 7050. Signed into law today by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, SB 7050 imposes new restrictions and penalties on third-party voter registration organizations.
“Third-party voter registration organizations play a critical role in ensuring that every eligible Floridian has an opportunity to vote, especially Black and Brown Floridians,” said Elias Law Group Partner Abha Khanna. “These organizations have helped register roughly a quarter of a million Florida voters since 2018, yet they now find their important work under assault by Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature. SB 7050 threatens to disrupt and discourage these organizations from helping marginalized Floridians register to vote. We are proud to work with the Florida NAACP, Equal Ground Education Fund, Voters of Tomorrow Action, Disability Rights Florida, Alianza for Progress, Alianza Center, UnidosUS, and Florida Alliance for Retired Americans to challenge these harmful and discriminatory provisions.”
The lawsuit, filed against Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, and Florida’s 67 supervisors of elections, argues that SB 7050’s restrictions on voter registration infringe upon third-party voter registration organizations’ constitutional rights to free speech and association and “violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because they were purposefully enacted, at least in part, with a racially discriminatory intent to discriminate against Black and Hispanic voters and have the effect . . . of denying, abridging, or suppressing the right to vote of otherwise eligible voters on account of race, ethnicity, or color.”
SB 7050 “threatens to severely curtail—and in some cases shut down altogether—these organizations’ ability to engage in core protected speech through voter registration activities,” the complaint continues. “There is no question which voters will be most affected by these efforts. [Third-party voter registration organizations] serve communities that have been historically excluded from the franchise—in particular Black and Latinx populations. Indeed, people of color are five times more likely than white Floridians to register with the assistance of a [third-party voter registration organization].”
Read the entire lawsuit here.
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