Florida is nothing if not determined to strip down its voter rolls, but doing so is not as easy as some politicians in the state might like, thanks to good old federal laws. The same day that the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would ask a federal court to prevent Florida from moving forward with its plan to remove potential non-U.S. citizens, Gov. Rich Scott's administration filed a federal lawsuit over a contentious voter purge, the Washington Post reports:
Florida filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Washington D.C., demanding that the state be given the right to check the names of its registered voters against an immigration database maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security …
"Please immediately cease this unlawful conduct,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner …
This latest action follows a lawsuit filed last week against the purge by a Hispanic civic organization and two naturalized citizens that was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
The litigation is unlikely to have much a practical effect since nearly every county supervisor in Florida had already suspended efforts to remove any of the potential non-U.S. citizens identified by the state.
Read more at the Washington Post.