{"id":143885,"date":"2026-02-04T21:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/143885\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T21:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:21:08","slug":"florida-supreme-court-declines-to-consider-ballot-language-for-recreational-pot-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/143885\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Supreme Court declines to consider ballot language for recreational pot measure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justices voted 6-1 to dismiss the case at the request of the state.<\/p>\n

The Florida Supreme Court will not consider ballot language on a recreational marijuana amendment.<\/p>\n

Following a filing by Attorney General James Uthmeier, the court dismissed the matter after the State Department declared that no citizen initiatives<\/a> met a necessary petition threshold to qualify for the 2026 statewide ballot.<\/p>\n

That included Smart & Safe Florida\u2019s<\/a> push to get a constitutional amendment in front of voters on decriminalizing marijuana. The campaign had called for Justices to consider the measure<\/a> anyway, as several lawsuits remain underway that could restore thousands of signatures tossed out over new rules imposed by the State Department this year, including several the campaign believes reach beyond what is allowed under Florida law.<\/p>\n

The Florida Supreme Court cancelled any oral arguments about the case two days after Uthmeier issued an advisory opinion<\/a> calling for the state\u2019s voluntary dismissal of a request for a hearing. Uthmeier said after the measure failed to meet a threshold of 880,062 validated signatures to make the ballot, the court should not hear arguments on ballot language, despite the campaign reaching the 220,016 signatures that would normally require judicial review.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida Statutes, in turn requires that the Attorney General \u2018must withdraw his or her request for an advisory opinion if the Supreme Court has not yet fulfilled that request,\u2019\u201d Uthmeier wrote in a brief. \u201cThat is the case here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A state website<\/a> reports the campaign gathered 783,592 verified signatures, though organizers say around 1.4 million petitions were submitted, and have argued county elections offices verified more petitions than currently included in the state total.<\/p>\n

Six of Florida\u2019s seven Supreme Court Justices agreed to dismiss the case. Only Justice Jorge LaBarga, the only member of the court not appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, dissented from the decision. LaBarga was appointed by former Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican.<\/p>\n

No written opinions were provided by either side of the court.<\/p>\n

The matter may still end up in front of the Florida Supreme Court, but only if the campaign\u2019s lawsuits result in the inclusion of enough verified signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justices voted 6-1 to dismiss the case at the request of the state. The Florida Supreme Court will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,17867,4260,69783,21249,10546],"class_list":{"0":"post-143885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-florida-supreme-court","12":"tag-james-uthmeier","13":"tag-jorge-labarga","14":"tag-recreational-marijuana","15":"tag-smart-safe-florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}