In expert reports submitted to a federal judge, political science professors embroiled in a controversy with the University of Florida harshly criticized a new state elections law that makes it harder for voters to cast ballots by mail, saying the changes will have a disparately negative impact on Black, Hispanic and disabled voters.

The reports were filed on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law (SB 90), championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature this spring.

In one of the reports, for example, University of Florida professor Sharon Austin said the new law is a backlash against Black and Hispanic voters' increased use of early voting and vote-by-mail in the 2020 general election.

"SB 90 is yet another attempt to disenfranchise Black and Hispanic voters so that they will not be able to elect their preferred representatives," she argued.

Groups challenging the law hired Austin, Michael McDonald and Daniel Smith, who is chairman of the university's political science department, to testify as experts. But UF administrators initially rejected the professors' requests to work for the groups, saying it would be "adverse" to the university's interests to aid the challenge to the law.

A national outcry over the school's attempts to silence the faculty members led UF President Kent Fuchs to grant permission to the professors to testify as experts and get paid. Fuchs also set up a task force to explore the issue. The tenured professors and three others have filed a separate lawsuit challenging the policy that gives the school discretion in blocking faculty members from testifying against the state.

According to court documents filed last week, each of the three political science professors are being paid $450 an hour to serve as experts in the elections lawsuit filed by groups that include Florida Rising Together, Hispanic Federation and Equal Ground Education Fund.

The law, in part, set new restrictions on the availability and use of drop boxes, where people can drop off vote-by-mail ballots. Under the law, supervisors of elections must have the boxes staffed at all times and can only use the boxes during early voting hours and at early voting sites. Supervisors who violate the requirement face $25,000 fines.

The drop-box restrictions are "directed at a practice that was used to an unprecedented degree by minority voters" in the 2020 general election, Smith wrote in a report filed in the lawsuit.

The drop-box limits "will curtail in whole or in part 122" drop boxes deployed by supervisors of elections in last year's general election and "decrease the opportunities of tens of thousands of voters across the state to return their mail ballots," he found.

The legal challenge also targets part of the law that imposes restrictions on providing such things as food and water to people waiting in line to vote within 150-foot "non-solicitation" zones outside polling places.

Smith said the restrictions will affect racial and ethnic minority voters, who often have to wait longer in line than white voters to cast ballots.

The lawsuit also alleges that part of the law requiring third-party voter registration groups to provide disclaimers to people signing up to vote is intended to have a chilling effect on groups conducting registration drives.

"Persons of color in Florida are five times more likely" than white individuals to rely on third-party organizations when registering to vote, Smith's report said.

The new restrictions on groups "that predominantly circulate in urban and racially and ethnically diverse communities … are directed at a practice that has been disproportionately used to register minority voters in past elections, and will decrease the opportunities of thousands of individuals to register to vote every year, with the burdens falling most heavily on persons of color," he added.

The new law also makes it a crime to distribute, order, request, collect, deliver or possess more than two vote-by-mail ballots other than a voter's own ballot or the ballot of an immediate family member. Plaintiffs allege that the provision will make it more difficult for people living in congregate settings or in crowded households to cast ballots by mail.

Austin's report detailed the history of "voting discrimination against Black and Hispanic voters that has plagued the state for several decades, " as well as Florida legislators' lengthy record of making changes to elections laws following record turnouts by Black and Hispanic voters.

The state's historic attempts to disenfranchise minority voters provide "important context" for this year's election-law changes, she argued.

The 2021 law "was not passed in a vacuum," Austin wrote.

"Indeed, SB 90 is in many ways a culmination of years of attempts by white legislators and governors to discriminate against Black and Hispanic voters," she added. "My analysis of Florida's legislative responses to increased Black and Hispanic voter participation demonstrates that Florida has passed legislation intended to make it more difficult for Black and Hispanics to vote at all, as well as to vote early and by mail, and that this was plainly the intended purpose of Florida's most recent legislation, SB 90."

Dara Kam reports for the News Service of Florida.

Copyright 2021 News Service of Florida. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.