RNC wants to defend Florida’s proof-of-citizenship voting requirement

Republicans asked a federal judge Tuesday to allow them to intervene in a lawsuit against Florida’s new requirement that voters prove their citizenship before they can cast a ballot.

In their motion, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of Florida said they should be allowed to defend the state’s citizenship requirement because their candidates would be harmed by it being blocked.

“If Plaintiffs win, Movants will thus be ‘deprive[d]’ of ‘a fair process’ for elections in which its candidates will participate,” they argued in their request.

The motion to intervene is the RNC’s latest effort to defend restrictive state voting requirements or challenge laws meant to make voting more accessible.

After President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act stalled in Congress, Florida Republicans passed their own state version of the sweeping voter suppression bill called the Florida Save Act.

If it goes into effect in January 2027, the Florida Save Act would, among other voting restrictions, require prospective and existing voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register or remain eligible to vote.

Immediately after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed the act into law, pro-voting groups, including the Florida chapter of the NAACP and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, challenged the citizenship requirement as an unconstitutional burden to vote.

Because the U.S. does not have a single, standardized system to prove citizenship, thousands of voters who lack citizenship documents would be disenfranchised by the new requirement, the groups argued.

In their suit, pro-voting groups* cited similar state proof of citizenship requirements — such as a Kansas law that was struck down by a federal court — that prevented thousands of eligible citizens from registering to vote.

In their motion to intervene Tuesday, the RNC and Florida Republicans said that they must be allowed to counter plaintiffs’ claims about the proof of citizenship requirement.

“Movants will argue that the law is valid, that an injunction is unwarranted, and that Plaintiffs’ desired relief would undermine Movants’ interests,” they asserted. 

“If Movants are denied intervention, their interests could be irreparably harmed by an order overriding Florida’s voter registration rules, which could undermine the integrity of Florida’s elections,” they added.

The NAACP opposed the RNC’s bid to intervene in the lawsuit, though other pro-voting groups involved in the suit took no position on the party’s motion.

Currently, the RNC is defending Arizona’s similar proof-of-citizenship requirement before the Supreme Court. 

The party previously defended a New Hampshire law that would have required voters to show proof of citizenship to register. However, a federal judge sided with pro-voting groups and struck down that law earlier this year.

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) is representing the Florida State Conference of Branches Youth Units of the NAACP and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans in the case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.