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A federal judge in Florida ruled on Friday that a state law requiring felons to pay fines, fees and restitution related to their convictions before being allowed to vote cannot be applied to people unable to make payments.

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee pointed to a U.S. constitutional amendment that prohibits denying citizens the right to vote in federal elections for failure to pay taxes.

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He also cited a previous federal court ruling that decreed access to voting “cannot be made to depend on an individual’s financial resources.”

“Each of these plaintiffs have a constitutional right to vote so long as the state’s only reason for denying the vote is failure to pay an amount the plaintiff is genuinely unable to pay,” Hinkle wrote in his ruling.

To enforce the law properly against felons who can pay their obligations but choose not to, he said the state could create a system for assessing true inability to pay.