Today several civil and voting rights groups filed lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Southern Florida on behalf of two Miami-Dade County eligible voters who were directly affected by Governor Rick Scott's voter purge program.
This is the third separate lawsuit challenging the state regarding the controversial purge of non-citizens. The purge has effectively been stopped in most counties in Florida, as supervisors of elections wait to get clear guidance about using a more accurate database (Collier and Lee counties, however, continue to pull voters off the rolls).
The ACLU, in conjunction with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, has previously announced their own lawsuit regarding the purge. So has the Department of Justice. But the lawsuits are flowing both ways, as Governor Scott is suing the Department of Homeland Security, claiming they have held out unlawfully in providing a thorough database that could help the state fairly remove non-citizens from the voting rolls.
Filing suit today were Veyeyo,the Florida Immigrant Coalition, the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, Florida New Majority and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East – Florida.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.