By: Peyton Nir
Nearly one million people in the United States have been prohibited from voting because of a prior felony conviction.[1] On July 16, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to overturn Florida’s voting rules for felons in Raysor, et. al. v. DeSantis.[2] In 2018, the Florida Senate passed an amendment to the state’s constitution that approves people with prior felony convictions to vote so long as they completed “all terms of” their sentence.[3] Voters affected by the new law, along with civil rights groups, sued Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, alleging that the law would require thousands to pay to vote, which violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Twenty-fourth Amendment.[4]
While the Federal District Court in Tallahassee ruled in favor of the voters, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal first upheld the lower court’s ruling, but then reversed itself and ruled in favor of the state “requiring convicted felons to pay off all fines in order to vote.”[5] In ruling for the voters, the District Court held that Florida’s pay-to-vote system created an unconstitutional wealth barrier system and violated both due process and the Twenty-fourth Amendment; the court entered a preliminary injunction and later a permanent injunction.[6] When the Eleventh Circuit reversed, the court stayed the injunction, which allowed felon disenfranchisement to continue in Florida.[7]
In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ultimately declined to overturn the state’s voting laws.[8] In a dissenting opinion, Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan wrote that the Court’s decision here “continues a trend condoning disenfranchisement.”[9] This decision will have long-lasting effects on the United States and the disenfranchised.
A brief look into the United States’ history of disenfranchisement shows that disenfranchisement is not a new issue. Disenfranchisement began before the United States was created; the Framers of the Constitution used English and European laws and, in the past, in a lot of communities, if someone murdered someone, they probably were not allowed to vote.[10] After the Civil War, a major turning point in the history of voting laws, African Americans were given the right to vote and in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified.[11] However, even though the Constitution gave everyone the right to vote, the southern states found other ways to block and reduce the number of African Americans from voting. Florida’s 1968 Constitution specifically provided the automatic disenfranchisement of felons.[12]
Another key time period in the fight for reinstating voting rights to disenfranchised people was the beginning of mass incarceration in the 1980s.[13] After many were released, they were not given their constitutional right to vote back, which led to high recidivism rates and the fight for the disenfranchised began.[14] In recent years, Florida governors, such as Charlie Crist and Rick Scott, have reinstated thousands of ex-felons’ voting rights.[15] While many have been given their constitutional right to vote back, there are even more who have not.[16]
In 2016, it has been noted that over 6.1 million American citizens were ineligible to vote by state laws.[17] That number of disenfranchised people varied even more by state; rates ranged from less than .5 percent in states including Massachusetts and Maryland to more than 7 percent in states including Alabama and Florida.[18] Compared to the rest of the country, Florida’s disenfranchised population is the largest.[19]
The main question that comes out of Raysor v. DeSantis is how will this affect the 2020 election?[20] Millions of citizens, otherwise eligible, are not able to vote in the upcoming November election because of the high fines they have to pay. Many disenfranchised people are “trapped in compounding, privatized cycles of debt, just one part of an ecosystem of inequities that puts up barriers to employment, housing, voting, and education.”[21] Unfortunately, in the upcoming general election, nearly one million citizens, otherwise eligible to vote, will not be able to cast their vote for the 2020 presidential election after the Supreme Court’s decision to decline to overturn Florida’s voting rules.
[1] Pete Williams, Supreme Court won’t change Florida voting rules for felons (Sept. 22, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-won-t-change-florida-voting-rules-felons-n1234071.
[2] Raysor, et. al. v. DeSantis, 591 U.S. ___ (2020)
[3] Election Administration, Sen. B. 7066 (2019).; SCOTUSblog, https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/raysor-v-desantis/ (last visited Sept. 22, 2020).
[4] Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Allows Restrictions on Voting by Ex-Felons (Sept. 22, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/us/supreme-court-felons-voting-florida.html; Raysor, 591 U.S. at 3-4.
[5] Id.; Williams, supra note 1.
[6] Raysor, 591 U.S. at 4.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id. at 7.
[10] Olivia B. Waxman, As Florida Restores Ex-Felons’ Right to Vote, Here’s the Dark History Behind Their Disenfranchisement (Sept. 22, 2020), https://time.com/5448284/ex-felon-voting-rights-amendment-4-history-disenfranchisement/.
[11] Id.
[12] Sarah A. Lewis, The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons in Florida: A Brief History, ECAN Bulletin, Dec. 2018 at 11.
[13] Waxman, supra note 10.
[14] Id.; St. Johns LR p.110 Allison J. Riggs, Comment, Felony Disenfranchisement in Florida: Past, Present, and Future, 28 St. Johns L. Rev. 107 (2015).
[15] Lewis, supra note 12, at 12; Riggs, supra note 14, at 110-11.
[16] Riggs, supra note 14, at 112.
[17] Christopher Uggen, Ryan Larson, and Sarah Shannon, 6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016 (Sept. 21, 2020), https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.
[20] Williams, supra note 1.
[21] Douglas Wood, U.S. Supreme Court’s Denial of Application to Vacate Stay in the Case of Raysor v. DeSantis (Sept. 22, 2020), https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/u-s-supreme-courts-denial-of-application-to-vacate-stay-in-the-case-of-raysor-v-desantis/.
