(May 6) Credit William Pryor, chief judge of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for systematically destroying claims that key election laws supported by many Republicans across the country are discriminatory or constitutionally impermissible.
Pryor’s April 27 decision in League of Women Voters v. Florida Secretary of State overturned a district court ruling that Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation rightly described as “ truly bizarre .” District Judge Mark Walker had ruled that Florida state legislators shouldn’t be permitted to implement modest rules governing ballot “drop boxes,” to require that new voter registrations be delivered to election officials in a timely manner, and to prevent electioneering within 150 feet of polling locations.
Walker somehow determined that the secret intent and effect of these provisions would be unduly to deter black Floridians from voting — in supposed violation, variously, of the First, 14th, and 15th amendments, along with a provision of the Voting Rights Act.
For years, Democratic politicians and activists have squawked that just about any effort to safeguard the integrity of voting is essentially a racist plot. Similar restrictions passed in Georgia in 2021, for example, were portrayed by the liberal media and politicians as a step toward apartheid , while MLB moved its All-Star Game from the state in protest. Yet with great regularity, including in Georgia, the states that implement voter integrity provisions actually see increased voter participation across all ethnic groups.
Pryor’s 78-page decision finding “both legal errors and clearly erroneous findings of fact” in Walker’s ruling was one of the most brutally methodical takedowns of a lower court imaginable. Heritage’s von Spakovsky ably handled the legal analysis, but what should interest a general audience is just how hard the Left must strain, and just how flimsy their arguments are, in order to try to prove racial discrimination that just isn’t there. … [The full column is at this link.]
