Attorneys for the state of Florida are arguing that a new Florida bill would make part of a lawsuit brought by civil rights and voting rights groups “moot.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker had asked both sides in the case to tell him how the newly passed voting bill in Florida would impact the legal challenge of last year’s election law, Politico noted. The new bill, passed this month by the Republican-controlled legislature, has yet to be signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Yet no lawyer for any party has alerted the court of imminent changes to the laws at issue before this court — though the parties appeared to have been actively monitoring the latest election legislation as it moved through the Florida Legislature these past several weeks,” Walker wrote in a two-page court documents, according to CBS 4 in Miami.
Attorneys for Florida’s Secretary of State Laurel Lee claimed the new bill would eliminate one provision being challenged in federal court.
According to Politico, the bill does away with a requirement that third-party voter registration groups must warn would-be registrants there’s a possibility their application would not be submitted in a timely fashion.
The groups suing the state had maintained this provision has impacted their ability to register new voters.
Last year’s law focused on the use of dropboxes and mail-in voting. The new bill tightened the state’s voting law even further.
CBS 4 reported that the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, Disability Rights Florida, and two dozen other groups filed lawsuits challenging the 2021 measure.
They have warned that it is intended to make it more difficult for Black and Hispanic residents to vote. However, Republicans point out that the 2021 law and this year’s bill are needed to maintain election integrity.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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