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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the state of Florida to clear a path for restoring voting rights to former felons who've served their time.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida issued a permanent injunction requiring Florida's Executive Clemency Board to establish a new voting rights restoration process for released felons by April 26.

“This Court is not the Vote-Restoration Czar. It does not pick and choose who may receive the right to vote and who may not. Nor does it write the rules and regulations for the Executive Clemency Board. Instead, this Court possesses the well-known and unsurprising 'province and duty . . . to say what the law is,'” Walker wrote. “And this Court possesses the unremarkable discretion to find a means for the Board to comply with the law.”

The ruling comes in a lawsuit James Michael Hand and others filed in March 2017 against Gov. Rick Scott and the clemency board alleging that there are arbitrary barriers to restoring voting rights that violate the U.S. Constitution.

Walker, sitting in Tallahassee, found fault with the state's system but said he did not have the authority to authorize Hand's suggested solution. “Plaintiffs would have this Court restore the right to vote to any former felon who has completed her whole sentence and a uniformly imposed five- or seven-year waiting period,” Walker said. “But such relief is beyond the scope of this Court's authority.”

At the same time, the state “essentially repackage[s] the current scheme into proposed remedies permitting the Governor and Board to do, as the Governor described, 'whatever we want' in denying voting rights to hundreds of thousands of their constituents,” Walker wrote. “This will not do. And Defendants' proposed remedy to abandon the whole vote-restoration scheme does not pass constitutional muster.”

Walker pointed to guidance from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. “If binding precedent spanning decades is to guide this Court—as it must—then an injunction must ensue to prevent further infringement,” Walker ruled. “Florida's vote-restoration scheme can no longer violate Plaintiffs' fundamental First Amendment rights.”

Walker ordered the board to establish “specific and neutral criteria to direct vote-restoration decisions,” and “meaningful, specific, and expeditious time constraints” for the voting rights restoration process. He suggested no one should have to wait more than an election cycle for a decision on their application. The judge said this relief “is appropriate to ensure that Florida's vote-restoration scheme is no longer based on unfettered discretion.”

Fair Elections Legal Network and the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll represent the plaintiffs.

“Today the Court has ordered Defendants to make meaningful changes to Florida's voting rights restoration scheme that will eliminate the risk of arbitrary and discriminatory decision-making and not merely serve as smoke screens,” Jon Sherman, senior counsel at the Fair Elections Legal Network, said in a news release Tuesday. “This is a victory for the principle that the right to vote cannot be subjected to officials' gut instincts and whims. We are also heartened that the Court prevented Florida from following through on its threat to become the only state in the nation with an irrevocable lifetime ban on voting for all former felons—what the Court called 'the ultimate arbitrary act.'”

Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein issued a statement in the same news release. “This ruling continues to shed sunlight on what we as citizens hold so precious in our democracy, the right of all citizens to exercise their right to vote,” said Leopold, a partner and chair of the firm's catastrophic injury & wrongful death practice.

Attorney General Pam Bondi represented the governor and the board. The AG's spokeswoman said by email, “We are reviewing the ruling.”