A federal trial judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state’s enforcement of a federal law to verify voter registration with the voter’s identification card.
The suit in U.S. District Court in Orlando named Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, the Republican National Committee, Republican Party of Florida, and supervisors of elections in Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval, and Orange counties.
Florida Rising Together filed its complaint a year ago claiming that the “matching protocol” — requiring voters to include the last four digits of their drivers’ licenses or Social Security numbers to register to vote — “is compounded by a legacy of historic and deliberate disenfranchisement and interacts with the effects of racial and economic discrimination in access to the ballot that continue to plague Florida.”
Tuesday, Secretary of State Cord Byrd celebrated U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger’s dismissal.
Another attack on our election integrity laws thwarted. The Federal judge granted our motion to dismiss. This challenge sought to limit our ability to verify a person’s information before adding them to the voter rolls. We have the best election law attorneys in the country. pic.twitter.com/HRCBdHqDkf
— Cord Byrd (@CordByrd) September 23, 2025
Florida Rising, a voting-rights organization, alleged disenfranchising administrative policies used by the state, saying that since 2018 more than 43,000 people eligible to vote had been denied due to the matching protocol, and communities of color have been disproportionately affected.
Florida Rising is free to refile an amended complaint by Oct. 6.
Under the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act, voter registration applications are only accepted after the Department of State verifies the applicants’ identities through Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration databases.
If the numbers don’t match, voters may fix them or cast a provisional ballot. The voter then has until two days after the election to verify identity.
That protocol is laid out in statute, and defined in more detail by administrative code. Florida Rising was challenging the matching protocol as it was established through administrative policy, calling it error-prone and that it disenfranchises eligible Florida citizens, especially minorities.
Not enough plaintiffs
“At the very least, Florida Rising’s failure to meaningfully allege or argue a factual or legal distinction between the requirements of HAVA, section 97.053, and the Administrative Policy, raises serious standing concerns. Nonetheless, because the Complaint will be dismissed on other grounds, the Court need not address standing at this juncture,” Berger wrote.
The court said the group hadn’t named all of the state’s elections supervisors as plaintiffs.
“Indeed, the challenged protocol is a state mandate, which obligates all Florida Supervisors of Elections to execute portions of the Matching Protocol. Thus, the sixty-three non-party Supervisors’ rights and interests are at issue in this case.
“Florida Rising offers no distinction for initiating the instant action against only the four Supervisors that are parties to this action. Therefore, to afford Florida Rising the statewide relief it seeks, the remaining sixty-three Supervisors must be party to the action, which will not deprive this Court of subject-matter jurisdiction,” Berger wrote.
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
