Lawsuit targets ‘Bureaucratic morass’ in felons voting

By Dara Kam Florida News Service

Calling the state a “national embarrassment,” a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday accused Gov. Ron DeSantis and other elected officials of failing “to realize the promise” of a 2018 constitutional amendment aimed at restoring voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences.

The lawsuit, filed by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and individual plaintiffs, described a “bureaucratic morass” encountered by felons trying to find out if they are eligible to vote.

The confusion stems from a controversial 2019 law that DeSantis and the Republicancontrolled Legislature passed to carry out the constitutional amendment, which said voting rights would be restored “upon completion of all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.” The law required felons to pay “legal financial obligations” — fees, fines and other court costs — associated with their convictions before they could be eligible to vote.

Wednesday’s lawsuit accused state and local officials of thwarting the intent of what was known as Amendment 4, which 65 percent of Florida voters supported.

“The defendants have used the legislative process, criminal enforcement and taxpayer dollars to frustrate the will of Florida voters, as expressed in their overwhelming support for Amendment 4, to return the franchise to more than 1.4 million citizens in Florida,” the 74-page lawsuit, filed in the federal Southern District of Florida, said.

Defendants include DeSantis, Secretary of State Cord Byrd, supervisors of elections, county clerks of court, members of the state Commission on Offender Review, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass and Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon.

The lawsuit asks a judge to order the state “to establish a reliable statewide database that allows people with prior felony convictions” to determine whether they have outstanding legal financial obligations or are eligible to vote.

Felons trying to determine eligibility often have to navigate a byzantine system of combing through court records to see if they have outstanding fees and fines. The state lacks a single repository where such information can be found.

The state Division of Elections, run by Byrd, scrubs voter-registration applications to determine eligibility.

County elections supervisors are responsible for removing ineligible voters from the rolls.

But the lawsuit, in part, maintained that a lack of uniformity in the way the state’s 67 counties determine eligibility makes the process unconstitutional. As an example, county clerks of court calculate what costs comprise “legal financial obligations” in different ways, according to the lawsuit.

“The defendants have created and encouraged a chaotic and broken system that is incapable of collecting and assessing the necessary information, particularly data related to LFOs (legal financial obligations), to determine the voting eligibility of people with prior felony convictions,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote.

Last year’s creation of the state Office of Election Crimes and Security — dubbed by critics as the “elections police” — has exacerbated the problem, the lawsuit said. The Legislature included $1.4 million for the office in the 2023-2024 state budget, which took effect July 1. Lawmakers steered $1.2 million to the program last year, DeSantis last August announced the arrests of 20 people for voting illegally in what he called the “opening salvo” for the office, which opened in July 2022. Many of the people who were arrested maintained that they were convicted felons who believed they were eligible to vote and were provided voter-registration cards by elections officials.

Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told reporters Wednesday that his group has worked for years with state and local officials to develop a system to ensure voters are eligible.

“Florida cannot have safe and secure elections if people do not have clarity … and the state needs to own up to its responsibility,” Meade said.

Felons trying to ascertain their eligibility can seek what is known as an “advisory opinion” from Byrd’s office. But the lawsuit contended the opinions do not clearly say whether someone is eligible and that the Department of State, which includes the Division of Elections, has a backlog of “tens of thousands of voter registration applications” awaiting review.

A failure to properly inform people about their voting eligibility “has resulted in a free-for-all by which various defendants … apply inconsistent and often incorrect legal analyses to … inaccurate information concerning whether people with prior felony convictions have completed their financial terms of sentence, in a complex labyrinth of misadministration that can only be described as ‘so standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement,’” said the lawsuit, which also alleges the state process violates the federal Voting Rights Act.

State and local officials “have created and perpetuated barriers to the automatic restoration of voting rights pursuant to

Amendment 4 by providing incomplete, inconsistent, and unreliable information, or refusing to provide any information at all, to citizens with prior felony convictions. This is a national embarrassment, notwithstanding the presence of a clear solution to the problem,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued.

The lawsuit pointed to a process used by Alabama, which issues a “voter information card” after the Bureau of Parole and Pardons has determined a convicted felon’s eligibility.

“If Alabama can create a process to confirm the eligibility of its voters, Florida should be able to do so,” the lawsuit said.

The 2019 law requiring payment of fees and fines was the focus of protracted litigation. A federal judge found the law was unconstitutional, but the Atlantabased 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision in a 6-4 ruling.

Meade, whose group was not a plaintiff in the challenge to the 2019 law, said the lawsuit filed Wednesday was not an attempt to “relitigate” the issue. He pointed to the arrests of people who erroneously believed they were eligible to vote as the “nail on the head” that sparked the lawsuit.

“We had no further option but to go to the courts and ask the courts to compel the state to do something very simple that they should have done years ago, and that is to do their job,” he said. “It is their responsibility.”

State Urges Heat Precautions

State emergency management officials are advising Floridians to ensure safety amid stifling heat.

“With the heat index value reaching an upwards of 110 degrees in some areas, it’s important to take breaks from the heat and drink plenty of water,”

Division of Emergency Management

Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said in a prepared statement.

“I urge all Floridians to practice heat safety and remember it is never safe to leave children or pets alone in a parked car.” The National Weather Service on Tuesday said a lengthy and dangerous heat wave will continue in South Florida and other parts of the country. “Record breaking heat is

Union Law Faces Another Challenge

expected in the Four Corners states (in the southwest U.S.), Texas to the Lower Mississippi Valley and South Florida each day,” the weather service said in an advisory.

For South Florida, the conditions are affected by “above normal sea surface temperatures and lighter than normal winds,” the weather service said.

The Division of Emergency Management warned that prolonged exposure to extreme heat increases risks of heat exhaustion or heat stroke. It advised people to take precautions such as limiting time spent outside, staying hydrated and wearing loose, lightweight clothing.

BY THE NUMBERS: FLORIDA POPULATION GROWTH

ewly updated estimates show Florida’s population increasing to more than 25 million people in 2032. Here are population estimates for April 1 of each upcoming year:

Source: Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research

School Voucher Totals Increasing

Florida is poised during the coming school year to see an increase in students receiving state-backed vouchers that can be used for such things as private-school tuition, after the Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a massive expansion this spring.

As of Friday, 240,291 vouchers had been awarded to students across the Florida Tax Credit and Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options voucher programs, compared to 173,416 vouchers awarded through the programs at the same time last year, according to Step Up for Students, a non-profit organization that helps administer voucher programs. For students with special needs, who are served by the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities program, 68,379 vouchers had been provided since the beginning of the year. Through the same period last year, 55,843 vouchers had been awarded. DeSantis in March signed a bill (HB 1) that, in part, eliminated income-eligibility requirements for families seeking vouchers.

Aunion representing Duval County government workers has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that places additional restrictions on publicemployee unions. Laborers International Union of North America, Local 630, and three individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit Friday in Jacksonville against Don Rubottom, chairman of the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission; the city of Jacksonville; the municipal utility JEA; and the Duval County School Board. It is at least the third constitutional challenge filed against the law, which took effect July 1 and includes changes such as preventing union dues from being deducted from workers’ paychecks.

The Jacksonville lawsuit challenges three parts of the law and seeks a preliminary injunction. As an example, it argues that a requirement for union members to fill out government-worded membership forms violates First Amendment rights. It contends that the forms are unnecessary and inaccurate. Also, the lawsuit takes issue with a decision by the Republicancontrolled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis to exempt unions representing law-enforcement officers, firefighters and correctional officers from the restrictions.

As an example, in part of the lawsuit challenging the membership forms, it says, “There is no justification for requiring this information on membership applications, nor for requiring it to be provided by disfavored unions but not by favored unions.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who is based in Tallahassee, refused in late June to issue a preliminary injunction sought by teachers unions against parts of the law.

Similarly, Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh declined to issue a preliminary injunction against the dues-deduction change in a case filed by three municipal unions in South Florida and three union members. Both of those underlying lawsuits remain pending.

New College Faces Faculty Turnover

Amid heavy turnover, New College of Florida officials are in the process of filling 36 faculty positions ahead of the fall semester. New College has secured signed offer letters for 15 incoming visiting faculty members as it looks to address what Provost Brad Thiessen called a “ridiculously high” level of turnover compared to previous years.

A presentation given Monday to a committee of the New College Board of Trustees detailed reasons that faculty members will be “out for at least one semester.” For example, six faculty members have retired, six have resigned and six took leave without pay. Another 16 faculty members will be out for reasons such as being assigned research leave or being on family leave. Also, out of seven visiting professor contracts that were up for renewal, five have been renewed, meaning that the school has two visiting professor slots that need to be filled.

Thiessen during Monday’s meeting pointed to the school being in the process of “negotiating offers” with six additional prospective faculty members. “If this meeting were a week later, I think we would get up to 21 (faculty members hired),” Thiessen said. The current vacancies would account for about a third of the small liberal-arts school’s total faculty, as the most recently published information on the New College website said the campus had 94 full-time faculty members. Fall classes are scheduled to begin Aug. 28. The school has drawn heavy attention in recent months as Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a slate of conservative trustees who have made changes. That has included the ouster of former President Patricia Okker, who was replaced by interim President Richard Corcoran, a former Florida House speaker and education commissioner.