The US supreme court declined to block swing-state Florida law criticized as a “poll tax.” Florida can continue to block people with felony convictions from voting until they’ve repaid all fines and fees they owe, the US supreme court ruled today. Florida Republicans passed the law after the state’s voters approved a 2018 initiative to restore voting rights to those previously convicted of felonies.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.
"This Court's order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida's primary election simply because they are poor," Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. "This Court's inaction continues a trend of condoning disenfranchisement," she added.
The fees and fines that felons are ordered to pay are wide-ranging but significantly high for an individual leaving prison, especially if they're unemployed. They can range from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, Lisa Foster, the co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a group that aims to eliminate fees in the US justice system, has told CNN. And in Florida, all the court charges that are unpaid after 90 days are referred to private debt collectors, who are allowed to add up to a 40% surcharge on the unpaid court debt, according to the Brennan Center.
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