Voting Rights

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 27th, 2019
CONTACT: Christiaan Perez, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, cperez@latinojustice.org, 212-739-7581

CONTACT: Christiaan Perez, cperez@latinojustice.org, 212-739-7581

Tallahassee, FL – Today, Judge Mark Walker, the Chief U.S. District Judge in Northern Florida, issued a court order granting a preliminary injunction requiring Florida’s Secretary of State and the Supervisors of Elections of 32 Florida counties to take further steps to comply with section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act. The order requires the Secretary of State to ensure that those 32 counties provide official ballots in both Spanish and English, Spanish language election assistance, and Spanish translations of other voting materials for elections beginning with the 2020 presidential primary election. 

We applaud the Secretary of State’s proposed rule changes, but the changes are too vague and Florida must comply with the law while its rulemaking process takes place

In a few weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments to decide the fate of the “Citizenship Question” in the 2020 Census.  LatinoJustice and Locke and Lord, LLP, along with some of the nation’s most prominent Latino, and other community nonprofit organizations, filed an Amicus, also known as a “friend of the court” brief. This brief details why the Supreme Court should affirm the district court’s ruling that the citizenship question is unconstitutional and that the subsequent undercount result in a loss of federal funding to several states and a severe reduction in political power, resources and participation in the Latino community.