Felons voting rights upheld by a federal judge, denying a request by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
U.S. Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle denied a stop on his own ruling to allow tens of thousands of convicts in Florida, who have ended their termed prison sentences, the right to vote. They will now be capable of casting their votes in this year’s election. The governor’s lawyers were challenging his felons’ voting rights verdict.
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There was a 2019 state law, with the goal of carrying out a constitutional amendment to re-certify the voting rights of felons “who have completed all terms of their sentences, including parole and probation.” This was a major topic of legal matters in Florida over the past few months, making media headlines of incarcerated individuals right to vote and due process after they are freed. Judge Hinkle recently went against the DeSantis administration to require felons to pay financial obligations. These required fees would include restitution, fines, and court costs related to their convictions to obtain their voting right.
As most felons who have finished their allocated sentence cannot afford to pay outstanding court fines and debt, Judge Hinkle outlined a process for felons to re-certify and register their voting rights in Florida. He also ruled that relevant fees and costs to the court, relevant to funding government services, would be considered “taxes,” and the request for felons to pay them is an unconstitutional “poll tax.”
The DeSantis administration made a request of asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a full-court hearing in the appeal request. Hinkle refused, saying in his ruling, “No matter how many times the state asserts the contrary, a statute that punishes some individuals more harshly based only on wealth, or that irrationally conditions eligibility to vote on wealth, is unconstitutional.” In the Governor’s lawyers’ appeal, they downplayed Hinkle’s ruling in May, 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 argued. Hinkle’s decision finalized a Fall preliminary injunction, which was upheld by an 11th Circuit three-judge panel last February. The appellate court’s rejection of the state’s request to have the full court reconsider the panel’s ruling on the injunction was valid.
Hinkle’s Sunday order again strongly refuted the state’s arguments in its argument against him. “A state cannot allow one citizen to vote but not an otherwise-identically-situated second citizen when the only difference is wealth; when the first citizen has money and so can pay a debt but the second citizen does not have money and cannot pay the same debt,” he wrote. After refusing each of the state’s arguments for why a hold in the case is necessary, Hinkle clarified to the court his decision to deny the request. “A person who is denied the ability to vote in violation of the United States Constitution suffers not just substantial harm but irreparable harm. Period,” he wrote.
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