Arguing that the case is of “exceptional importance,” lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis have made a rare move of asking a full appellate court to consider a challenge to a voting-rights ruling that would pave the way for hundreds of thousands of felons to cast ballots in the November elections.
Appeals in federal lawsuits are almost always initially heard by three-judge panels, whose decisions can be revisited later by the full court in what are known as “en banc” hearings.
But the DeSantis administration last week asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an initial hearing by the full court, due in part to a panel decision earlier in the case and because of the far-reaching nature of the lawsuit.
The request is “very, very unusual,” veteran elections-law attorney Mark Herron, who represents Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley in the lawsuit, told The News Service of Florida on Wednesday. Earley is one of the defendants.
DeSantis’ lawyers made the filing after U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in May ruled against the state in a battle over a 2019 law that was aimed at carrying out a constitutional amendment to restore the voting rights of felons “who have completed all terms of their sentences, including parole and probation.”
Hinkle’s May ruling came after he issued a preliminary-injunction decision in October that said part of the 2019 law requiring felons to pay “legal financial obligations” — fees, fines, costs and restitution — associated with their convictions was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court in February upheld the preliminary-injunction decision, which found that the state cannot deny the right to vote to felons who are “genuinely unable” to pay court-ordered financial obligations.
DeSantis requested an en banc rehearing on that decision, but the appeals court turned him down.
In the May ruling, Hinkle cemented his earlier decision by laying out a procedure for hundreds of thousands of Floridians who have been convicted of felonies and have court-ordered debts to be able to cast ballots in November. Under the process Hinkle crafted, the vast majority of convicted felons in Florida would gain access to the polls by simply registering to vote.
In the state’s appeal filed June 2, lawyers for DeSantis argued that a hearing by the full appeals court is warranted because of the rulings by Hinkle and the February decision by the three-judge panel.
The rulings are “contrary” to legal precedents, and “initial consideration by the full court is necessary to secure and maintain uniformity,” the state’s lawyers wrote.
The appeal “also involves one or more questions of exceptional importance” and deserve the full court’s consideration, they argued.
A group of mostly Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas — on Tuesday filed a brief supporting Florida’s request for an en banc hearing.
In the appeal, DeSantis’ lawyers blasted Hinkle’s May 24 “startling” ruling, saying it “stripped Florida of a defining characteristic of its sovereignty: the power to determine, within the constraints of the Constitution, the composition of the state’s electorate.”
Hinkle’s decision “rests on error built upon error,” the state’s lawyers argued.
“It gets Supreme Court precedent wrong. It gets binding circuit precedent wrong. And instead of remedying a constitutional violation, it creates one,” they wrote, adding that the three-judge panel “made some of the very same mistakes” in February.
The state also took issue with the process laid out by Hinkle, calling it “a substantial overhaul of Florida’s electoral process.”
And the state took issue with a form created by Hinkle for felons to request an “advisory opinion” from the Florida Department of State to determine if they are eligible to vote.
“One would be hard-pressed to find a greater intrusion on state sovereignty,” DeSantis’ lawyers argued.
The issues in the appeal “are critically important and time sensitive,” they said.
“With a primary election less than three months away, and a presidential election only three months after that, the need for a prompt and decisive ruling by this court is clear and urgent,” the state’s lawyers wrote in the 34-page brief, referring to August primary elections and the November general election. “If elections are held with the district court’s injunction in place and that injunction is later vacated because it erroneously reenfranchised hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters, the integrity of those elections will have been corrupted and their results possibly opened to challenge.”
Initial en banc review “is the state’s best, and perhaps its only, option for securing timely relief,” the DeSantis administration lawyers said.
In a response filed Friday, attorneys for voting- and civil-rights groups that filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of felons who’ve served their time behind bars agreed that “the public interest will be served by a prompt resolution” of the case. But they asked for more time to file briefs in the appeal and accused the state of mischaracterizing “the scope and effect” of Hinkle’s decision.
“The ruling provided much-needed clarity for hundreds of thousands of voters about their voting eligibility,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Hinkle’s decision “provided clarity and improved efficiency for voters and elections officials after the state repeatedly failed to offer any plan to implement the electoral provisions at issue in this case,” they argued.
The “state defendants utterly failed to create or implement a workable process” for administering the law since it went into effect nearly a year ago and after Hinkle’s October preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs said.
The law, approved by Republican legislators last year, required felons to pay court-ordered fees, fines, costs and restitution to be eligible to vote. Backers of the legislation (SB 7066), including DeSantis, a Harvard Law School graduate, maintain the law reflects the language of the constitutional amendment, which was approved in 2018.
But opponents of the law argued that linking voting rights and finances amounts to an unconstitutional “poll tax.” The law was problematic for a variety of other reasons, they said.
Testimony from county elections officials, clerks of court, felons and scholars throughout an eight-day trial last month spotlighted the difficulty in ascertaining whether people who were convicted of felonies owe money. Court records, especially in older cases, can be contradictory or incomplete. Databases are difficult to navigate. People sometimes have to pay to obtain the records.
The plaintiffs’ court filing Friday pointed to Hinkle’s May 24 ruling, which said the state “has shown a staggering inability to administer the pay-to-vote system.”
–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida
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Dennis C Rathsam says
Pay all your fines to the state of Fl, then you can vote! If you dont pay your fines on tickets, on your drivers license, you cant drive! Seems simple to me.
Denali says
Driving is a privilege, voting is a right. That, seems pretty simple.
As Judge Hinkle stated, these fees are nothing more than a poll tax. In case you have forgotten, the 24th amendment states that poll taxes shall not be used to impede voting.
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Karen says
Vote him out of office. He is hanging on Trump’s coat tails. I thought gov De Santis was educatedWell, on paper, to know how to determine right from wrong. Apparently, I was wrong. He should know that the people of florida voted on this issue. He is siding with trump. An he will go down with trump!
Stephen Smith says
I think DeSantis is just trying to stall until after the next election. He doesn’t want people voting that are not his supporters.
But really. Hasn’t he spent enough of our tax dollars fighting this lost cause.
Jane Gentile-Youd says
It cost us taxpayers a bundle to feed, house, and clothe prisoners so I can understand paying the fines but payment should be offered to be made via community service instead of forcing a poor person to pay with cold cash.
Yellowstone says
Everyone individual must wonder after seeing what just happened in Georgia’s Primary Election what Florida’s administration is up to. H-m-m-m! This terrible order emanating from this administration’s offices smells like voter suppression?
Sixty percent of Florida’s voters voted for election reform addressing this exact issue. Gee, Governor, whatever happened to “of the people, by the people, and for the people”?
People of the world “Take notice. Florida’s governance is/was a Democracy”.
Sherry says
Surprise! trump must have called his “mini-me” DeSantis and told him to do all in power to suppress the possible Democratic voters. Look for more such outrages!
Diane Cocchiola says
Why do Republicans try to stop citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote, they make it hard by closing polling locations, shortening early voting hours, and discouraging vote by mail. Are they afraid they can’t win in a fair election?
Sherry says
Speaking of wasting taxpayers $$$$. . . how about using our money for security while killing endangered animals. . . I wonder how many fines/restitution could be satisfied with $76, 859:
In March, CREW received Secret Service documents in response to our records request that showed that Don Jr.’s protection for the August trip cost taxpayers $17,000. We sued, because it looked like the government had not done a complete search of their receipts. We were right—it turned out that the full bill was actually $76,859.36.
The trip was already controversial for many reasons: he was retroactively awarded a permit to hunt the endangered argali sheep after he had already killed it, he had a private meeting with Mongolia’s president that we know nothing about, and he hunted alongside a major Republican donor. Now, the steep cost of the trip—and the fact that the total was originally withheld—should also raise eyebrows.
The Trump family is costing American taxpayers big. Share the story of Donald Trump Jr.’s expensive trophy hunt with your friends and family on Facebook, on Twitter, or by forwarding this email.
As the president’s son, Don Jr. is entitled to Secret Service protection and should be protected, but taxpayers need to know how much they are paying to facilitate his trophy hunting hobby and his interactions with political donors and foreign leaders.
We also know that the Trump family is taking 12 times as many protected trips as the Obama family did, which translates to roughly 1,000 more trips per year. While we know that many of those trips have been to promote or support Trump Organization business, there are thousands of trips that remain a mystery. If just one of Don Jr.’s trophy hunting trips cost taxpayers more than $75,000, it’s staggering to think how high the family’s total bill must be.
Pogo says
@Teach your children well…
no taxation without representation 5th grade
https://www.google.com/search?client=d&q=no+taxation+without+representation+5th+grade
Edith Campins says
I thought “We the people” had voted on this. Why is DeSantis so afraid of people voting? How is someone coming out of prison, already having a hard time finding a job suppossed to pay ?
Denali says
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals consists of 13 judges. Six were appointed by Trump, four by Obama, and one each by Clinton, HW and GW. Could this be the real reason DeSantis wants the full court to hear the case? In their childish way of thinking, they only need to sway one judge to win and by golly, winning is everything to them. Being on the moral side of history has no bearing in their lives.
Judge Hinkle laid out a strong case showing that the State was remiss in the application of the new law. Errors include the inability of the State to who actually owed how much, failure to consider the person’s ability to pay and the institution of what is basically a poll tax. Yes, many of these former felons owe fees to the state and possibly restitution to victims, however, their legal debts have no bearing on their right to vote, especially if he/she is unable to pay. If the State cannot provide each person with an itemized statement showing his/her debt, how can they say the debt has not been paid. A full accounting must be provided each former felon.
Mr. DeSantis and hundreds of other mis-informed Trump followers operate under the impression that these former felons will vote the Democratic ticket. There is absolutely no basis for this assumption, no studies have been made or polls been taken. The real crux of this matter is that if the DeSantis clique had written the law more favorably to the former felons, they might have swayed them to vote the R ticket.
This is just a further attempt by the out of control Republicans to suppress the vote.
can'tfoolme says
Wondering why everyone is assuming that all the felons are Democrats (wink, wink) and think this would affect the election outcome. Felons who have fulfilled their sentence, which included restitution, are free to vote. Jane Gentile-Youd’s suggestion that those who can’t pay should do community service is a common sense solution…..although, if you embezzeled or stole money, you ought to have the money to pay back.
Sherry says
Once you have served your time as a convicted Felon, finding any kind of decent job is almost impossible. Therefore pay $$$ as restitution is essentially impossible as well. I agree, a good compromise would be community service. Unfortunately, Desantis is not looking for compromise, he just wants to follow his instructions from trump and suppress the vote (of what could be mostly people of color) in hopes of getting impeached racist trump re-elected.
KKsays says
Republicans can’t win elections unless they suppress the voting rights and ability of those who they think are least likely to vote for Republicans, because of their unfair, unjust and cruel treatment towards them.
Pogo says
@When you owe your soul to the company store
Well intentioned suggestions of community service miss the point on several accounts. Florida’s courts are entirely financed by fines and fees. That system exists in a constant state of ever diminishing return when any increase is made to the cost of its supervision and collection of its revenues. Administering and managing community service would be a significant increase in costs – not to mention other consequences, e.g.: a new version of Florida’s “heritage” of slave labor on work farms and chain gangs. And then there is the inevitable, “…THEY are taking MY job, I don’t want THEM around ME, MY kids, MY property…” etc., etc.
Many sparsely populated govermental entities (municipalities, counties — and even states) are described with euphemistisms, e.g., the phrase “fiscally constrained” to get around the reality that they’re just not viable without substantial subsidies by everyone else – everywhere else. What to do? Arrest poor people, people passing through, etc., and hold them by their heels and scoop up what falls from their pockets. They (the governments) end up with huge bad debt owed them. They compensate by increasing volume…
Finally, they put them (those arrested) in debt and make it a law that they can’t vote against the aforementioned situation as long as they’re in debt. Changing the name of debtor’s prison doesn’t change what it is or does.
Pogo says
Yes, there is no ist in euphemism.
Frank Rizzo says
Who does Republican DeSantis think he’s fooling? This is not about payment of restitution, fines, and fees. That’s BS. Nobody was ever going to see a dime of that money anyway. This is about voter suppression. The more people that vote, the more democrats get elected. The fascist republican party knows this. The majority of Americans don’t like their hardass policies.
Flatsflyer says
DeSantis must have got his degree from Trump University. To claim a degree from Harvard University is making a mockery of this school. Trump calls and DeSantis asks how high to you want me to jump.DeSantis himself is crooked as can be, falsely claimed residence in Flagler County when he as in Congress. This idiot must be made a one term governor because he has done nothing for the people of Florida. Does lining onesh pockets with bribes, kickbacks and donations defines a good term in either State and Federal offices, BAU for Trump supporters.