TALLAHASSEE – A federal appeals court overruled the federal judge assigned to the Disney World case who had ruled several voting laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 intentionally discriminated against minority voters.
In a 2-1 decision issued April 27, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said evidence didn’t show Florida lawmakers deliberately targeted Black voters when provisions limiting ballot drop boxes, third-party registration forms and engagement with voters in line were passed.
In March 2022, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled the laws were racially discriminatory. Walker is the judge who was assigned Disney’s lawsuit against the DeSantis administration regarding Disney’s control of the Reedy Creek district.
Walker also had ordered the state to seek preclearance from the court for any additional changes to the voting laws because of what he called a long history of discrimination.
But the appeals court said Walker was wrong both on the law and on the facts. The three-judge panel dismiss the preclearance requirement. William Pryor and Britt Grant voted in the majority, while Jill Pryor dissented. The Pryors are not related.
In his ruling, Walker had said “every single challenged provision has a disparate impact on Black voters in some way,” also saying the state “has repeatedly, recently, and persistently acted to deny Black Floridians access to the franchise. …
“To be sure … targeting a particular race’s access to the franchise because its members vote for a particular party’ is impermissible. But we must be careful not to infer that racial targeting is, in fact, occurring based solely on evidence of partisanship. Evidence of race-based discrimination is necessary to establish a constitutional violation.”
The ruling said court precedent “does not require evidence of voter fraud to justify adopting legislation that aims to prevent fraud.”
“It (Florida Legislature) passed a bill that supporters argued would safeguard the integrity of elections against non-imaginary threats,” William Pryor wrote. “The wisdom of the Legislature’s policy choices is not ours to judge.”
The appeals court said Walker used incorrect data to form his ruling “from the start.”
“The district court relied on fatally flawed statistical analyses, out-of-context statements by individual legislators, and legal premises that do not follow our precedents,” William Pryor wrote in the 79-page decision. “On the contrary, examining the record reveals that the finding of intentional discrimination rests on hardly any evidence.”
The appeals court also said judges must remain mindful “of the danger of allowing old, outdated intentions of previous generations to taint (Florida’s) legislative action forevermore on certain topics” and that “more recent history does not support a finding of discriminatory intent.
“The only pieces of legislation cited by the district court that were adopted since the year 2000 offer no support for its finding of discriminatory intent.”
William Pryor noted that the Supreme Court has warned against “conflating discrimination on the basis of party affiliation with discrimination on the basis of race.”
“In sum, based on this record — and even in the light of the deferential standard of review we must apply to the findings of fact — the district court clearly erred in finding that the challenged provisions were enacted with discriminatory intent in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,” the appeals court said. “As a result, we reverse the decision of the district court in part.”
The panel did say part of the law prohibiting people from engagement with voters in line was “unconstitutionally vague” and sent it back to Walker for further proceedings. Plaintiffs said the provision would keep people from providing food or water to voters waiting to cast ballots.
Senate Bill 90 passed in 2021. In 2022, a separate 11th Circuit panel put a temporary halt on Walker’s ruling before midterm elections.
Walker was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2012. He has a history of disagreeing with DeSantis policy. He has ruled a state ban on some workplace bias and diversity training violates employer free speech. In that ruling, he said the policies created a monster-filled world like the Upside Down in “Stranger Things.”
Walker also has blocked part of a state law limiting how race and gender can be taught in state universities, starting that opinion by quoting George Orwell’s “1984” and called the law “positively dystopian” and a violation of First Amendment rights.
Both of those rulings also have been appealed to the 11th Circuit.
Walker, 56, is a Florida native and lifelong resident. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida. He is a former public defender and state circuit court judge. He was appointed to the federal bench in 2012 on a 94-0 Senate vote.