League of Women Voters of Florida v. Browning: Blocking Enforcement of A Restrictive Voting Law

Editor’s Note: On December 15, 2011, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote, and the Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (“PIRG”) filed suit in federal court in Tallahassee challenging Florida’s onerous new restrictions on community-based voter registration drives.

The restrictions challenged in the suit were enacted by Florida legislators earlier this year as part of H.B. 1355, a broad package of election law changes. They include extremely burdensome administrative requirements, unreasonably tight deadlines for submission of completed forms, and heavy penalties for even the slightest delay or mistake.  These restrictions are so unnecessarily harsh that they have forced the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, among other groups, to shut down their voter registration programs in Florida.

On behalf of these civic groups, the Brennan Center, the ACLU Foundation of Florida, and pro bono partners Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Coffey Burlington asked the court to block Florida’s new restrictions on the basis that they violate both the US Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act.  On March 1, Plaintiffs presented their argument for a preliminary injunction in front of Judge Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida.

A federal judge blocked enforcement of key provisions of a restrictive voting law in Florida at the end of May, a breakthrough victory for Florida voters and voting rights advocates nationwide.

The law included onerous restrictions on community-based voter registration drives, forcing the League of Women Voters of Florida and other groups to shut down their drives. In his decision, US District Judge Robert Hinkle found that the Constitution and federal law prohibit most of Florida’s recently-passed restrictions, and highlighted the law’s impact on the Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

“Together speech and voting are constitutional rights of special significance; they are the rights most protective of all others, joined in this respect by the ability to vindicate one’s rights in a federal court. … [W]hen a plaintiff loses an opportunity to register a voter, the opportunity is gone forever,” US Judge Robert L. Hinkle wrote in his opinion blocking most of the Florida law. “And allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives — thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote — promotes democracy.”

“Today’s decision makes clear that laws that make it harder to participate in the political process should be rejected,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, and co-author of the report, Voting Law Changes in 2012. “Florida’s law and others approved in the past year represent the most significant cutback in voting rights in decades. Today’s decision will help turn the tide. Rather than erecting senseless barriers to voting, we should make our voting system work by upgrading our ramshackle voter registration system.”

In 2011, a wave of suppressive laws passed that could make it significantly harder for millions of eligible Americans to cast ballots this fall, according to the Brennan Center’s comprehensive study, Voting Law Changes in 2012.

The Florida decision marks the first time a federal court has blocked one of these restrictive voting laws, and comes after the Department of Justice, in a separate lawsuit, opposed Florida’s law restricting voter registration and early voting. The Justice Department also rejected restrictive voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas.  A judge ruled that Wisconsin’s voter ID law violated the state Constitution.