A federal appeals court has been urged by the Biden administration to uphold a decision that found that certain provisions of a Florida election law from 2021 discriminate against Black voters. Attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice this week submitted a 35-page brief in support of the objections to the law made by voting-rights organizations, which included tighter regulations on ballot drop boxes and the provision of food and drink to voters in line.
The case was appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the state, the Republican National Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee after Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker determined that certain provisions of the law were meant to discriminate against Black Floridians, a significant Democratic voting bloc.
Attorneys from the Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief last week, urging the Atlanta-based appeals court to support Walker’s findings that specific provisions of the statute (SB 90) violated the federal Voting Rights Act ahead of a hearing scheduled for September 15.
The brief stated that defendants “cannot argue that the invalidated elements of SB 90 were motivated exclusively by party, and not a race, given the evidence provided at trial and the (district) court’s factual findings.” The three overturned sections “particularly target Black voters,” not Democratic voters in general, according to the court’s thorough explanation.
Following the defeat of former President Donald Trump in 2020, GOP leaders nationwide advocated for a reform of the nation’s election rules, and the Republican-controlled Legislature and Governor Ron DeSantis implemented them. Republicans claimed that even though Florida’s 2020 election went rather smoothly, improvements were required to assist assure that fraud-related problems would not arise in the future.
A number of lawsuits were brought by voting rights organizations contesting the amendments, and the appeals court merged the cases. In a brief submitted this month, the state argued that the rule is “facially neutral and a common-sense election law,” refuting claims that it is racially discriminatory.
According to the brief submitted to the appeals court, “the record demonstrates the Florida Legislature trying to balance integrity with access to boost voter trust, offer clear regulations, and resolve flaws before they damaged Florida’s election.” Additional limits put on drop boxes, where voters can submit ballots for voting by mail, are at the heart of the legal dispute. Democrats used drop boxes and voted by mail in substantially more numbers than Republicans in the 2020 elections.
In accordance with the law’s requirements, drop boxes could only be available at early voting locations during early voting hours and had to be watched over by county supervisors of elections staff. Other contentious provisions of the law establish additional limitations on third-party voter registration organizations and prohibit organizations from offering food and water to persons in the queue at voting stations.
Walker concluded that “every single challenged provision has a discriminatory impact on Black voters in some way” in his March opinion. In a brief filed last week, the Justice Department said that the appeals court should affirm Walker’s finding that certain provisions of the bill were “motivated, at least in part, by racially discriminatory intent in violation” of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“The district court rightly took into account evidence of racially polarised voting in assessing plaintiffs’ Section 2 intent claims. Polarized voting patterns can offer a strong incentive to implement limitations that, by design, fall more heavily on minority voters when race and party are closely linked. The brief partially cited a case law when it stated, “In fact, when a legislative majority acts to entrench itself by targeting voters by race because those voters are unlikely to vote for the majority party, that purpose “constitute(s) racial discrimination” that both the Constitution and Section 2 prohibit.
Walker issued an injunction prohibiting certain aspects of the bill, but the appeals court stayed the decision in March. That effectively implies that, while the legal challenge is ongoing, the controversial portions of the statute are in force for this year’s elections. The appeals court granted the stay in part because it felt Walker’s conclusion was not sufficiently focused or limited, as required by earlier court rulings. For instance, Walker defined the state’s history of racial discrimination as a “grotesque history,” stretching back to post-Civil War voting restrictions.
The Justice Department said in its brief from last week that the appeals court might remand Walker’s case to review the law pertaining to earlier discrimination. The brief stated that the appeals court might choose to give a limited remand “to the degree the district court’s treatment of Florida’s history of discrimination puts into question whether it would have reached the same ultimate findings absent that approach.” The district court would then be able to say whether it would have made the same decisions in the absence of such treatment.
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