Hispanic Federation v. Byrd

Immediately after SB 7050 passed, ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, Demos, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP filed suit in federal court to block the law on behalf of plaintiffs Hispanic Federation, Poder Latinx, and three individual non-citizens who register voters for Florida 3PVROs.

The lawsuit argues that SB 7050’s non-citizen ban restricts plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free speech, by preventing them from communicating their belief that every eligible voter should participate in shaping their government. It argues that SB 7050 would harm Hispanic Federation and Poder Latinx because it would effectively halt their operations by decimating their voter-registration workforce. In addition, the suit charges that SB 7050 violates the First Amendment because it is unlawfully broad, as well as the Due Process Clause because it is too vague. It also alleges that SB 7050 impedes plaintiffs’ right to contract for discriminatory reasons. And lastly, the suit argues that SB 7050 enacts an unconstitutional alienage-based restriction in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

In July 2023, the federal court agreed with plaintiffs’ equal-protection claim and preliminarily enjoined SB 7050’s non-citizen ban provision before it took effect. Doing so, Chief Judge Mark Walker explained that the law would prevent the plaintiffs from “embody[ing] those democratic ideals that, for nearly two hundred forty-seven years, have made our system the envy of the world.”

The state appealed the trial court’s decision, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument on the emergency injunction in January 2024. A full trial on the merits was held in April 2024.