A Florida federal judge is planning to press forward in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic with a bench trial in a battle over a requirement that ex-felons pay all fines and fees before being able to vote, despite concerns from the state about the video conference format.

In a telephonic hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said he and his staff have been working to implement the platform used by federal courts nationwide that should allow them to conduct the trial set for April 27 with live testimony via video conference.

He set up a test run on April 8 to iron out any kinks.

"We'll do it on the national platform," Judge Hinkle said. "We'll plan on everybody being online, on video, and we'll see how it goes."

Florida Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee had filed a notice early on Thursday with concerns about the video conference format, which she said might not be able to simultaneously accommodate all parties involved as well as the public and would make examination of exhibits difficult.

Lee instead had proposed prefiling direct testimony, five-minute summaries of direct testimony on the phone followed by telephonic cross-examination, and openings and closings done over the telephone.

But counsel for the plaintiffs — 17 indigent former felons who are blocked from voting because they cannot pay their court fees — stressed the importance of live testimony and cross-examination and said their own experiences using the Zoom video conference platform for depositions, all of which involved the use of exhibits and occurred without incident, suggest that a bench trial with live testimony could be done successfully by video conference.

Their clients are fighting S.B. 7066, the state law passed last year that implemented Amendment 4, a voter-approved state constitutional amendment that restored ballot rights to former felons. The state law requires former felons to pay all legal financial obligations before being able to vote.

The majority of the estimated 1.4 million former felons in Florida are believed to have unpaid fees and fines. At a hearing last fall, the plaintiffs put forth University of Florida professor Daniel Smith, who compiled data from 58 of the state's 67 counties and identified 542,207 people with felony convictions who had completed their terms of incarceration and parole. Of those, 80% had outstanding legal financial obligations.

The Legislature's Office of Program Policy and Government Accountability found that in fiscal year 2017-18, the courts successfully collected just 9.31% of fines and fees imposed in felony cases.

In February, the Eleventh Circuit unanimously upheld Judge Hinkle's preliminary injunction that prevents the state from blocking the 17 plaintiffs from registering to vote. The court ruled the requirement on fines and fees, as it currently stands, is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause because it punishes those who cannot pay more harshly than those who can.

The court said nothing prevents the state from collecting fines and fees from ex-felons who have the ability to pay, meaning that if the ruling stands, the state will have to set up a process to determine which ex-cons are genuinely too poor to pay their fines.

Attorneys for the state have argued that conducting "ability to pay" hearings would be an undue administrative burden, although the Eleventh Circuit noted that Judge Hinkle's preliminary injunction largely left it up to the state to determine what kind of procedure it wants to implement.

"It is not as though this is the first time the state will be making individualized determinations about a criminal defendant's financial situation on a large scale," the Eleventh Circuit said. "The state already has a procedure by which criminal defendants can attest to their income and assets in order to determine whether they qualify for a public defender."

The trial is expected to last about a week, and the judge has said he plans to rule quickly after its conclusion.

The plaintiffs are represented by David Giller and Pietro Signoracci of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, Leah C. Aden and John S. Cusick of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., Wendy Weiser, Myrna Perez, Sean Morales-Doyle and Eliza Sweren-Becker of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Julie A. Ebenstein, R. Orion Danjuma, Jonathan S. Topaz and Dale E. Ho of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc. and Daniel Tilley and Anton Marino of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

The state is represented by Bradley R. McVay and Ashley E. Davis of the Florida Department of State, and Mohammad O. Jazil, Gary V. Perko and Edward M. Wenger of Hopping Green & Sams PA and George N. Meros Jr. and Tara R. Price of Holland & Knight LLP.

The case is Jones et al. v. DeSantis et al., case number 4:19-cv-00300, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

--Editing by John Campbell.