Lawsuit Accuses State of Holding Up Pot Measure

By Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — Accusing state elections officials of “ignoring the indisputable facts and their clear legal obligation,” backers of a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to allow recreational use of marijuana are asking the Florida Supreme Court to force Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to move forward with a ballot-approval process.

The Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is sponsoring the proposal, has collected more than three times the number of signatures required to trigger a crucial legal review of the measure by the Supreme Court.

But a lawsuit filed Thursday at the Supreme Court accuses elections officials of improperly holding up the process.

Once a required number of signatures for court review is reached, Florida law requires Secretary of State Cord Byrd’s office to “immediately” transmit the proposal to Attorney General James Uthmeier. The attorney general’s office then has up to 30 days to send the measure to the Supreme Court, which makes the final decision about whether the proposal meets constitutional muster and should be placed on the ballot.

“This timeframe is laid out by the Florida Constitution and Florida statutes in part to provide this (Supreme) Court sufficient time to consider citizen initiative petitions submitted for its advisory opinion review,” said the Smart & Safe Florida lawsuit, which names as defendants Byrd and state Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews. “It is nonsensical, and contrary to the express constitutional and statutory mandates, to allow the secretary and director to indefinitely refuse to issue the … letter and frustrate the constitutional order.”

Smart & Safe Florida faces a Feb. 1 deadline to submit 880,062 valid signatures to make it onto the November 2026 ballot. According to the state Division of Elections website, the committee had submitted 662,543 valid signatures as of Friday morning.

The committee had to submit at least 220,016 signatures to trigger the Supreme Court review, a threshold it exceeded in early June. Smart & Safe Florida in August asked Byrd’s office about the delay in forwarding the measure to Uthmeier but did not receive a response, according to the lawsuit.

“Ignoring the indisputable facts and their clear legal obligation, respondents (the elections officials) refuse to exercise their mandatory ministerial duty,” Glenn Burhans, an attorney with the Stearns Weaver Miller firm, wrote in the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for Byrd said the agency does not comment on pending litigation, and DeSantis’ office did not respond. The Supreme Court on Friday set a Nov. 17 deadline for state attorneys to file arguments in the case.

Thursday’s lawsuit is the second legal complaint Smart & Safe Florida has lobbed against elections officials this month over the recreational marijuana proposal.

A lawsuit filed Oct. 14 in Leon County circuit court accused Byrd of illegally directing county supervisors of elections to invalidate more than 200,000 petitions. The directive required supervisors to scrap petitions that did not include the full text of the proposal, which the committee sent to voters. The lawsuit alleges that nothing in Florida law requires that “the full text” of a proposal be provided or displayed to voters before they sign petitions. Judge John Cooper is scheduled to hold a hearing in the case on Nov. 21.

Thursday’s lawsuit referred to the legal tug-of-war over the disputed signatures, suggesting that Byrd’s office could be banking on the invalidation of enough signatures to avoid the need for Supreme Court review of the proposed amendment.

“Regardless of why the respondents refuse to issue the … letter, they have no discretion to do so once the statutory criteria under (a section of state law) has been met,” the lawsuit said. “And, certainly, Florida law gives them no discretion to do so in the hope that a sufficient number of petitions might be invalidated such that Smart & Safe’s petition might someday fall below the threshold required by (the section of law),” the lawsuit added.

The law “clearly and unequivocally states” that the secretary of state must begin the process of Supreme Court review once a statewide initiative gathers more than 25 percent of the signatures required for ballot placement, Smart & Safe Florida said in a statement on Friday.

“For reasons unknown, this has not happened, and we are asking the court to intervene and compel the secretary to simply follow longstanding Florida law as the Smart & Safe Florida has far surpassed that threshold last summer,” the statement said.

The 2026 proposal to authorize use of recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and older is Smart & Safe Florida’s second stab at passing such a measure. Nearly 56 percent of voters supported a similar measure on the November 2024 ballot, falling short of the required 60 percent for approval.

DeSantis fiercely opposed last year’s marijuana measure and used parts of his administration to combat it. Money steered to a political committee headed by Uthmeier, who was then DeSantis’ chief of staff, was the subject of a state House probe.

Leon County prosecutors this month convened a grand jury to investigate potential wrongdoing related to the Hope Florida Foundation’s receipt of $10 million as part of a $67 million legal settlement that Centene — Florida’s largest Medicaid managed-care company — reached last fall with the Agency for Health Care Administration.

After receiving the money from the settlement, the foundation gave $5 million grants to Secure Florida’s Future, a nonprofit tied to the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and Save our Society from Drugs. The groups within days made contributions to Keep Florida Clean, a committee headed by Uthmeier that fought the proposed pot amendment.