11th Circuit, on 2-1 Vote Reverses District Court Order Putting Florida Back Under Federal Voting Supervision Based on Racially Discriminatory Intent; Appeals Court Also Rejects Challenge to Elimination of Ballot Drop Boxes, Most Other Challenged Florida Provisions

You can find the decision authored by Judge William Pryor, and a one-paragraph dissent from Judge Jill Pryor, at this link. (The very short dissent is quite curious.)

From the majority opinion:

This appeal involves four recently enacted provisions of Florida’s election law, including provisions that regulate ballot drop boxes, the solicitation of voters at the polls, and the delivery of voter-registration forms by third-party voter-registration organizations. Several plaintiff organizations sued the Florida Secretary of State, the Florida Attorney General, and several Supervisors of Elections. After a bench trial, the district court enjoined three provisions because it found they were adopted with the intent to discriminate against black voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And it imposed a preclearance requirement under section 3(c) of the Act. The district court also ruled that the solicitation provision was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Finally, it enjoined a provision that required third-party voter-registration organizations to provide a disclaimer to voters who use their services to register to vote, but all parties agree that any appeal of the judgment as to that
provision has been rendered moot by the repeal of the provision.


Because we hold that the findings of intentional racial discrimination rest on both legal errors and clearly erroneous findings of fact and that only part of the solicitation provision is unconstitutional, we reverse in part, affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand.

Here is what I wrote about the district court case at the time it was issued:

Quite a blockbuster ruling from the federal district court. The court found that in enacting certain election laws limiting registration outreach and the use of drop boxes, Florida violated the Voting Rights Act. The court also found that Florida acted intentionally discriminating against the state’s black voters. And although the parties hardly briefed it, the Court imposed a very strong remedy of requiring that certain changes in voting rules in Florida be precleared before the court for a period of 10 years under section 3c of the Voting Rights Act.

This is a huge deal, and the district court’s analysis is probably right, but there is good reason to believe that this case could be reversed on appeal by the much more conservative 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court. Indeed, the district court seems to signal that very early in the case that the appellate courts have stopped meaningfully protecting minority voting rights…

And here is what I wrote about the “presumption of good faith” that the motions panel applied when it temporarily stayed this district court order pending appeal. (The merits panel today applied the same reasoning in rejecting the argument that Florida acted with racially discriminatory intent):

Even worse than that, the ruling applies a “presumption of good faith” to defeat the claim of intentional discrimination against Florida. This is another Justice Alito Special, a way to prevent courts from finding intentional racial discrimination when legislatures pass voting laws. I explained how it and related laws insulate states from such claims in The Supreme Court’s Pro-Partisanship Turn, 109 Georgetown Law Journal Online 50 (2020).

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