Judge blocks Florida provision that would limit Latino voter registration

A federal judge has blocked a provision of a Florida elections law that would bar noncitizens from collecting voter registration forms, a move that would limit voter registration efforts by community-based organizations ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The provision, which was blocked Monday and would have gone into effect this month, sought to fine organizations $50,000 for every person found to be "collecting or handling" voter registration forms who was not a U.S. citizen.

This would have included lawful permanent residents, even though many are longtime Floridians and have close ties to their communities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state along with other organizations to block the provision.

“This hits home for us because about 70% of our canvassers are noncitizens,” said Frederick Vélez, the national director of civic engagement at the Hispanic Federation, one of the nation’s largest Latino advocacy organizations and a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Voting and immigrants’ rights advocates said the provision was an attempt to suppress Latino voters and others from underrepresented communities.

"We just don't see any reason why a noncitizen wouldn't register voters just as efficiently or as good as someone that's a citizen," Vélez told NBC News on Thursday. "When we see these types of legislation, it's hard not to think that it has some type of racist motivation behind it."

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Florida Secretary of State Cord Bird said the department does not comment on pending litigation. Both Moody and Cord are defendants in the lawsuit.

The voter registration provision was part of a larger elections bill that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed on May 24, the day he announced his campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Voting rights and Latino advocates have long said that voters of color are more likely to be registered to vote by community-based organizations than white voters. This is especially true in Florida, Vélez said.

"This is certainly an attack on Black and brown communities of underrepresented communities," he said of the provision. "And for us, it's just so obvious that in a case like this, we just have to challenge it."

With the preliminary injunction blocking the provision from going into effect, Vélez and those working to engage voters in Florida can get to work ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The Hispanic Federation plans to focus their Latino voter engagement efforts in counties and precincts, such as Florida's Osceola County, which includes Orlando and Kissimmee, where Latino voter participation is not proportionate to the Latino voting population, Vélez said.

Since 2016, the Hispanic Federation has registered nearly 100,000 Latino voters in Florida, according to Vélez, who said his organization plans on building off that success in 2024.

Republican supporters of the new law said it would make elections more secure. In issuing his 58-page ruling Monday, Judge Mark E. Walker said that while the state was "correct to seek integrity in our electoral system,” its solutions for doing so "are too far removed from the problems it has put forward as justifications.”

He added that the plaintiffs embody the "democratic ideals that, for nearly two hundred forty-seven years, have made our system the envy of the world."

Noncitizens who lack the right to vote have "spent years registering and encouraging citizens to exercise that solemn right," he said. They may, "at least for now, continue to do so and add more voices to the millions of others singing a more perfect Union into existence.”