Supreme Court deals blow to felons in Florida seeking to regain the right to vote

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Thursday to overturn a federal appeals court’s decision that blocked some Florida felons’ eligibility to participate in elections — a major blow to efforts to restore voting rights to as many as 1.4 million people in the battleground state.

The action lets stand a temporary halt by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit of a judge’s order that had cleared the way for hundreds of thousands of felons in the state to register to vote.