The lawmakers defend the law by arguing that the state has every right to demand that money, but let’s be clear: They know full well that they aren’t ever going to get most of it. In 2018, Florida collected only 20 percent of more than $250 million in outstanding court-related fines and fees. That’s because criminal defendants are not, as a rule, flush with cash. A vast majority are so poor they qualify for a court-appointed lawyer; there’s no way they can afford court costs and fines, which run into the hundreds and often thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Many don’t even know the size of their debt, because Florida doesn’t maintain a statewide system to track who owes what.

In Wednesday’s unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed that the state has a general interest in collecting fines and fees. But that doesn’t hold when the people who owe those costs cannot afford them. “The continued disenfranchisement of felons who are genuinely unable to pay [court costs] and who have made a good-faith effort to do so, does not further any legitimate state interest that we can discern,” the court said.

Meanwhile, those with the means to pay off their court costs are set. “The felon with money in the bank will be re-enfranchised,” the court said, “but the felon who can’t will continue to be barred.” In other words, if you are a Floridian with a criminal record, your fundamental constitutional right to vote depends on how much money you have.

This is what used to be called a poll tax, which Southern states once imposed to keep poorer blacks from voting, until the 24th Amendment barred the practice in 1964.

For now, the court avoided holding that the Florida law was a poll tax, grounding its reasoning instead in the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. A state violates that guarantee, the Supreme Court has held, “whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.” Florida may disenfranchise all its felons if it chooses to, but once it restores their right to vote, as it did in 2018, it can’t condition the exercise of that right on a voter’s wealth.

The appeals court’s ruling is limited to the 17 plaintiffs, all indigent ex-felons, but its reasoning applies to the vast majority of Floridians whose voting rights were restored by Amendment 4, most of whom are in a financial position similar to that of the plaintiffs. The case now returns to the trial court, which will hold a trial in April to decide whether the law is a poll tax or must be invalidated under any other provision of the Constitution.

Even if all 1.4 million Floridians with a criminal record were re-enfranchised tomorrow, the Republicans have already achieved one of their key goals: to foster confusion and uncertainty, which can discourage many eligible voters from turning out. That’s why it is all the more important for newly enfranchised citizens not to lose hope, and to get out and register.