Kramer Levin teamed up with two public interest law firms, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the Advancement Project, to launch a lawsuit in Miami, Florida federal court today challenging the constitutionality of a burdensome and discriminatory new Florida law that has already significantly impaired non-partisan voter registration in that state. The suit, League of Women Voters of Florida v. Cobb (Case 06-21265-CIV-Jordan), was brought on behalf of a range of nonpartisan civic and religious organizations that engage in grassroots voter registration activities. During the 2004 presidential election, it is estimated that third-party groups like plaintiff League of Women Voters registered more than 500,000 new voters in Florida, but the new law has already forced some of these groups, including the League, to suspend their registration drives.
The new law imposes an initial fine of $250 per form on certain individuals who register voters with third-party groups when the forms are not delivered to local officials within a very tight 10-day deadline. The law, which exempts political parties, is a strict liability statute that levies heavier fines of $500 and then $5,000 for each form that is not submitted, respectively, by the voter registration deadline or at any other time. In the past, forms could be submitted anytime before the voter registration deadline. The law threatens to significantly chill free speech and voter participation in Florida. The burdens imposed by the law are particularly inappropriate in view of the absence of any serious past problems in Florida with the submission of late voter registration forms.
Kramer Levin attorneys Eric A. Tirschwell, Craig L. Siegel, Erin A. Walter, Parthena Psyllos, David A. Landman and Emily J. Groendyke have worked with the Brennan Center, the Advancement Project, and Becker & Poliakoff P.A., to bring the lawsuit.