Jaime Roy, a rising senior at the University of Florida, voted in a local race in Gainesville this year, but it wasnt easy. Roy, who uses the pronoun they, doesnt own a car. To get to their polling place at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Roy had to take two buses that took between 40 minutes to an hour each way.

Even though Roy spends the majority of their time at the university, Floridas top election official wouldnt allow them nor any of the 830,000 students enrolled at public institutions of higher education in the state to vote early on campus.

But that could soon change. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the policy, ruling that the states blanket ban on early voting on college campuses is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker found that the ban violated the guarantees of the First, 14th and 26th amendments. The 26th Amendment prohibits age restrictions on voting for anyone 18 or older.

Walker, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2012, conceded that some inconvenience when voting is constitutionally tolerable, but said Floridas position went beyond that. The ban made it more difficult for a particular group of people young voters around college campuses to vote.

Floridas public college and university students are categorically prohibited from on-campus early voting, he wrote. This is not a mere inconvenience.

The ban has its origin in a 2013 state law that lays out where local election supervisors may allow early voting. Allowed locations included stadiums, civic and convention centers as well as government-owned senior and community centers.

But in 2014, the office of Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) issued an opinion saying the student union at the University of Florida, a state-funded institution, didnt qualify as such a place, because it was designed for, and affiliated with, a specific educational institution. He went further, saying that the law did not permit early voting at college- or university-related facilities because lawmakers had explicitly chosen to exclude them from the bill.

Walker did not buy that reasoning, nor the states argument that its interest in maintaining campus order and parking outweighed the burden the ban placed on students right to vote. In his ruling Tuesday, the judge said the states justifications reek of pretext.

While the [Detzners] Opinion does not identify college students by name, its target population is unambiguous and its effects are lopsided, the judge wrote. The Opinion is intentionally and facially discriminatory.