Florida Supreme Court asked to revive recreational pot push – Tallahassee Democrat
The legal fight over legal weed goes on. Now, despite repeated efforts by state officials to keep recreational marijuana off Florida’s 2026 midterm ballot, the measure’s sponsor is asking the Florida Supreme Court to intervene.
Smart and Safe Florida, the sponsor of the adult-use recreational marijuana proposal, wants the court to review state directives it says are creating roadblocks to gathering the signatures needed to qualify the proposal.
The state has made it harder to get a proposed state constitutional amendment before voters. And the proposed pot measure been entangled in lawsuits and lambasted by high-ranking state Cabinet members – all while trying to meet the state’s requirements of 880,062 signatures by Feb. 1.
In a Feb. 16 filing to the Supreme Court, the group asks justices to determine whether state orders to Florida’s 67 supervisors of elections were lawful. Those orders led to more than 70,000 signatures being invalidated.
The state said 41,894 were signed by “inactive” voters and 27,752 were gathered by people who weren’t residents of Florida. The prohibition against signature gathering by nonresidents is a provision from a new Florida law currently being challenged in federal court.
Smart and Safe Florida contends that Florida law does not say supervisors must validate petitions only from active voters. In a mid-January trial court ruling, a judge said state elections officials improperly directed the invalidation of signatures for “inactive” voters, but upheld that signatures gathered by nonresidents were invalid.
Shortly after, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal sided with the state, overturning the lower court’s ruling on the “inactive” voters.
The marijuana group’s latest filing is asking for a review of these appeals court rulings, and it said that what’s left unresolved is whether supervisors are obligated to comply with what it calls nonbinding orders by the state.
Weeks prior, the Florida Supreme Court decided against considering the ballot text of the marijuana initiative, after state officials said it failed to meet signature requirements by the Feb. 1 deadline. The Florida elections division website says that the ballot measure only has 783,592 valid signatures.
But Smart and Safe Florida contended the state’s announcement was “premature,” since not all of Florida’s counties had finished counting signatures. The group also said that the state’s constitution clearly mandates the Florida Supreme Court to review the ballot’s text to ensure it’s focused on a single subject, saying the constitution reads that justices “shall render” an advisory opinion.
Moreover, the provision of state law prohibiting both nonresident and noncitizen volunteers from gathering signatures is under review in federal court.
In July, when the law (HB 1205) took effect, a federal judge agreed the provision restricts core political speech and ordered it couldn’t be enforced, but shortly after that, a divided appeals court overturned that ruling.
This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Stephany Matat is based in Tallahassee, Fla. She can be reached at SMatat@gannett.com. On X: @stephanymatat.