MIAMI, Fla. — A coalition of voting rights and civil rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit April 1, 2026, challenging Florida House Bill 991, a new law requiring documentary proof of citizenship, arguing it will disenfranchise eligible voters rather than improve election integrity. The groups seek “to block enforcement of the law before it goes into effect in 2027” and contend “the requirement violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
The plaintiffs include the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Florida Rising, Common Cause, Hispanic Federation and UnidosUS, alongside the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and Advancement Project. According to the ACLU, they argue that “Florida’s additional documentation requirement will make it significantly harder for eligible voters to register and participate in elections.”
They are asking the court “to declare the law unlawful and block Florida officials from enforcing the documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement.”
Jessica Lowe-Minor, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said that “Florida voters already confirm their citizenship when they register to vote,” and that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already “signed a bill tying the right to vote to the possession of costly documents that many U.S. citizens don’t have easy access to.”
Vote.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to increasing voter participation, reports that the “Florida Save Act” requires one of the following documents to vote: “a valid U.S. passport or passport card, a certified birth certificate paired with photo ID, a naturalization certificate, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad.”
Kansas enacted a similar law in 2016, where 35,000 Kansans were blocked from registering to vote.
Caren Short, director of legal and research at the League of Women Voters of the United States, said that this law requirement “is based on xenophobic lies and disinformation.”
Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, argued that the bill “creates roadblocks meant to hinder our ability to vote, and silences the voices of Black and brown communities, naturalized, young people, and low income voters.”
Amy Keith, Common Cause Florida executive director, said it is not “a coincidence” that this bill is “putting the very voters who are suffering most from Florida’s affordability crisis” at risk.
As reported by the Florida Policy Project, demand for housing has surpassed supply in many communities, increasing prices and competition, meaning that those who work in hospitals, small businesses and schools cannot afford to live in Florida due to property taxes and high closing costs.
“[Instead] of addressing the affordability crisis, the controlling party in the state legislature spent last legislative session creating new barriers to the ballot box,” said UnidosUS Florida State Director Jared Nordlund.
Carrie McNamara, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, highlighted that “Florida has a long and troubling history of suppressing the right to vote by placing barriers between voters and the ballot box.”
According to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Legacy Project, on Election Day in 1920, a Black man exercising his right to vote in Orlando was lynched by white mobs, which then proceeded to burn homes in Ocoee, silencing the town’s Black community to the point where it was unknown how many residents were killed.
Moné Holder, chief advocacy and political officer at Florida Rising, said that the approval of this bill in Florida is “a calculated attack on our democracy,” and that it does not solve real problems “but instead [manufactures] a crisis to justify mass disenfranchisement.”
She added, “[this] isn’t about election integrity; it’s about making it harder for millions of eligible Floridians to vote.”
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This lawsuit matters because it’s about whether requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote will help election security or hurt voter participation — with big implications for voting rights in 2027 and beyond.