ACLU of Florida

Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy. Everyone should have the right to exercise their voice at the ballot box. The ACLU of Florida strives to protect and expand voting rights across Florida. While politicians across the country pass laws to suppress voting rights by creating barriers to registration, implementing cutbacks on early voting, and enacting strict voter identification requirements, the fight for voting rights remains as critical as ever. Voter suppression among communities of color, students, disabled people, and the elderly, persists throughout Florida’s history, all the way to the present.

To ensure all Floridians have equal access to the ballot box, the ACLU of Florida is committed to:
1. Invalidating the poll tax law, SB7066, and ensuring all 1.4 million Floridians are able to register and vote in Florida by:
- Invalidating the 2019 restrictive law.
- Maximizing the number of Floridians eligible to vote under Amendment 4.
- Reaching out to directly impacted people to alert them of their voter registration eligibility and status.
2. Securing local reforms that improve election administration and voter protection by:
- Expanding early voting.
- Reforming the signature matching process.
- Selecting polling places that are genuinely accessible by Florida’s diverse population.
3. Expanding voting rights and participation in elections through passage of a statute or constitutional amendment adopting Election Day registration.

Approximately 147,000 people are incarcerated in Florida’s prisons and jails, costing our taxpayers billions of dollars every year that could be used to solve some of the most pressing issues we face regarding education, healthcare and infrastructure.

In a state where Black people make up only 16 percent of the population but 46 percent of the incarcerated population, there is clearly a crisis in our criminal justice system. To achieve true equity and liberation for those most impacted by our justice system, we have to change the systemic institutions that have created this crisis. We need reform at every level of our justice system – from pre-arrest and arrest to sentencing, incarceration and reentry.

We envision a criminal justice approach that is fair and free of racial bias, keeps communities safe and respects the dignity and rights of all who come into contact with it. We envision a Florida that prioritizes people over prisons by supporting rehabilitation and abolishing prison.

To ensure our criminal legal system prioritizes people over prison and is fair and free of racial bias, we are committed to:
1. Reducing mass incarceration and racial disparities by securing sentencing reform through:
- Increasing the amount of rehabilitation credit a person can earn while incarcerated from 85% to 65%.
- Exploring legal options and other efforts to reduce racial disparities in plea agreements.
- Encouraging candidates for State Attorney to commit to pursuing sentencing reform through their own charging decisions and in state statute.
2. Reducing incarceration and racial disparities caused by unaffordable money bail by:
- Exploring legal options and other efforts to block the use of money bail in Florida.
- Encouraging candidates for State Attorney to commit to not seek money bail and pursue statutory reform.
3. Reduce incarceration and racial disparities caused by driver’s license suspensions by:
- Exploring legal options and other efforts to block license suspensions for non-driving offenses.
- Reforming clerk of court policies on suspensions for failure to pay court costs.
- Repealing state statutes that permit suspensions for non-driving offenses.

Anti-immigrant laws that weaponize programs against lawfully present immigrants and their families, separate families, harm DREAMERS, require local resources to be spent on enforcing immigration law must be ended. Cruelty is not an immigration policy. Policies that make Florida a “show your papers” state are un-democratic and do not align with our values.

In Florida, one out of every five people are born outside of the U.S. making the state one of the most diverse in our country. It is critical that every single person in our state is able to live, work and travel without fear of violence, harassment and discrimination. As a state with a vibrant and unique immigrant community, we must ensure the movement for immigrant justice is a reality in Florida.

At the ACLU of Florida, we are challenging laws that deny immigrants, regardless of their status, access to due process and other legal rights; laws that impose indefinite and mandatory detention; policies that codify racial profiling into law and indiscriminately target people of color; and laws that discriminate on the basis of nationality.

To ensure the right to due process and equal treatment of all Floridians remain intact, the ACLU of Florida is committed to:
1. Challenging Senate Bill 168, which mandates local law enforcement collaboration with ICE, by:
- Exploring legal challenges and other efforts to repeal SB 168.
- Highlight the adverse consequences of the law on Florida’s communities.
2. Ending unconstitutional ICE and CBP practices, by:
- Ending prolonged pretrial detention for ICE detainees.
- Reforming immigration bail proceedings to no longer disregard the ability to pay and limiting the use of cash bail in Florida.
- Stopping Customs and Border Patrol’s transit and traffic stops on Greyhound and other forms of transportation.
3. Developing local policy protections that reduce local collaboration with the denial of immigrants’ rights, by:
- Rejecting/defeating ICE programs such as 287(g), Warrant Service Officer and Basic Ordering agreements.
- Addressing racial profiling in immigration enforcement.
Monitoring and regulating immigrant detention centers.

Black people face institutional, state-sponsored terror in this country every day. The list of Black people who have been murdered by police is too long for people to ignore the institutionalized racism in our country, and it must end.

Fatal encounters with police are not the only thing brutalizing Black and Brown communities. Over-policing, voter suppression, minimum mandatory sentencing laws, housing discrimination, criminalization of marijuana and non-violent drug abuse, for-profit policing, and lack of implicit bias training are equally marginalizing Black and Brown communities across America.

The ACLU is urgently committing to this broader, more profound fight – which groups like Movement for Black Lives have been leading. With our partners across Florida, the ACLU of Florida is dedicated to dismantling and eradicating white supremacy and racism in all of its forms.