TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The last battle to legalize marijuana in the nation’s third-largest state triggered lawsuits, fingerpointing and a possible criminal investigation.
Get ready for Round two.
Trulieve, the state’s largest medical marijuana company, has already put up nearly $26 million to bankroll a recreational pot initiative for the 2026 ballot. But the new campaign is opposed again by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and now there are fresh allegations that his administration is improperly using its power to block the measure from going to voters.
Smart & Safe Florida, the political committee sponsoring the legalization measure, filed a lawsuit this past week challenging a push by Florida’s top election officials to throw out as many as 200,000 signatures — nearly one-quarter of what’s needed to qualify for next year’s ballot.
The lawsuit was filed after the director of the state Division of Elections — who works for Secretary of State Cord Byrd — called on local election supervisors to throw out previously validated petitions because organizers did not provide a copy of the entire amendment to people it reached out to by mail.
The suit calls the actions of the DeSantis administration “unlawful” and is asking a judge to intervene. In a statement about the lawsuit, the campaign said Florida elections officials issued an “unprecedented directive” and they “wrongly attempting to change the rules after-the-fact.”
“Smart & Safe Florida filed this lawsuit to require the Secretary of State to follow Florida law and to prevent the state from denying the Florida voters who signed the petitions to have their voices heard,” the campaign said in a statement. “We are asking the court to enforce the law, It’s really that simple.”
The legal challenge comes as a Florida grand jury appears to be investigating what steps the DeSantis administration and the governor’s allies took to defeat the 2024 proposed initiative to legalize marijuana.
And amid this dispute, another unusual move by the DeSantis administration could also wind up preventing the pot initiative from reaching voters.
In what appears to be a break from the traditional process, the new legalization measure has not been sent to the Florida Supreme Court for a legal review — despite a state law that lays out deadlines for both Byrd and the state attorney general to act. If the court does not sign off on the amendment by April 1, there are questions as to whether it can make the ballot.
Florida has had medical marijuana for close to a decade, but a drive to allow for recreational marijuana fell short of the 60 percent threshold needed for approval. Nearly 56 percent of Florida voters voted yes.
Donald Trump said he was supporting the amendment, but DeSantis, as well as his administration, stepped in to oppose it. But it was revealed after the election that the state directed $10 million from a Medicaid settlement toward a foundation linked to a welfare initiative spearheaded by first lady Casey DeSantis.Money from the Hope Florida Foundation then flowed to two groups that donated millions to the campaign to defeat the 2024 initiative.
State Rep. Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola), the chair of a House budget committee that probed the money shuffle this spring, acknowledged this week that he was subpoenaed by a grand jury put together by State Attorney Jack Campbell and testified before it. He did not discuss his testimony.
It was after the defeat of the 2024 amendment that Smart & Safe Floridaquickly geared up to try again in 2026. The revamped measure included changes meant to address criticisms from DeSantis and other Republicans regarding smoking in public and marketing toward children. The governor saidlast February that he opposed the initiative.
This time around, the legalization campaign started by mailing out a petition form along with a return envelope and paid postage. On the reverse side of the petition was a notice directing voters to a website with the full text of the amendment.
In late March, Byrd sent a letter to amendment organizers stating that they failed to provide the full amendment to voters and contending the forms were not valid because the website address was on the back. After his letter, the group did include a copy of the full amendment and provided Byrd with the names of all those who returned forms to Smart & Safe Florida by mail.
On Oct. 3, Maria Matthews, the director of the state elections division, emailed all 67 local election supervisors and directed them to invalidate up to 200,000 petitions. In its lawsuit filed in circuit court against Byrd and Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley, Smart & Safe Florida contends there is no provision in state law requiring the full text of an amendment be provided before someone signs a petition.
While this legal battle gets underway, there are also questions as to whether the state is trying to throw up other roadblocks.
Under Florida law, the state’s top election official is supposed to “immediately” submit an initiative to the attorney general once the Division of Elections confirms enough signatures have been gathered to trigger a review by the state Supreme Court.
The high court is responsible for determining if the ballot summary is misleading or if the amendment does not stick to a single subject.
That review is supposed to be undertaken when organizers obtain and have verified 25 percent of the more than 880,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. Currently the Department of State says that Smart & Safe Florida has gotten nearly 663,000 signatures — or more than 75 percent of the needed amount.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who while chief of staff for DeSantis directed the campaign against the last marijuana amendment, told POLITICO this month that he had not gotten official notice from the Department of State that the amendment had crossed the necessary threshold. State law says the attorney general is supposed to petition the Supreme Court within 30 days after election officials verify enough signatures have been received.
POLITICO asked the Department of State several times in the past week about why it had not notified Uthmeier. When asked outside a legislative committee meeting on Wednesday, Byrd said that his department had been notified they were going to be sued over the amendment.
“In light of pending litigation, I’m not going to comment,” Byrd said.
A spokesperson for Smart & Safe Florida also declined to comment on the delay in the Supreme Court review.
During the last go-round, the Florida Supreme Court reviewed the recreational pot amendment in early November 2023.The court approved it on April 1 — the constitutional deadline — by a 5-2 margin. DeSantis, despite appointing the majority of justices on the panel, criticized the ruling.