{"id":56844,"date":"2025-11-22T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T17:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/56844\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T17:34:09","slug":"judge-says-florida-was-right-to-try-to-remove-200k-pot-petitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/56844\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge says Florida was right to try to remove 200k pot petitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Siding with Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration, a Leon County circuit judge on Friday ruled that state officials did not err whenordering supervisors of elections to scrap<\/a> more than 200,000 petition signatures supporting a proposed constitutional amendment to allow recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n

Circuit Judge John Cooper\u2019s ruling wiped out roughly a third of the signatures submitted by the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is backing the proposal. The committee, which faces a Feb. 1 deadline to submit more than 880,000 verified signatures for placement on the 2026 ballot, quickly vowed to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Smart & Safe Florida filed the lawsuit to challenge an Oct. 3 directive by state Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews requiring supervisors to scrap petitions that did not include the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. The committee sent the petitions to voters<\/a>, and the state alleged signatures were \u201cnot obtained legally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit argued that nothing in Florida law requires that \u201cthe full text\u201d of a proposal be provided or displayed to voters before they sign petitions.<\/p>\n

State elections officials also argued the flagged petitions needed to be invalidated because Smart & Safe Florida made changes to the format of the petition form approved by Secretary of State Cord Byrd\u2019s office. The state alleged the format was changed without permission in violation of Florida law.<\/p>\n

The front of the disputed form was identical to the petition that was approved, which had a blank back page. The back of the forms deemed to be invalid by Matthews included a link to Smart & Safe Florida\u2019s website, where the full text of the proposed amendment can be found.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not something that the secretary just came up with out of whole cloth,\u201d Ben Gibson, an attorney for Byrd, said during a hearing Friday.<\/p>\n

Florida law says that \u201csignatures obtained on an unapproved form cannot be counted,\u201d Gibson, who works for the Shutts & Bowen LLP firm, argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not an interpretation. That is the black letter law of the statute,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

But Glenn Burhans, who represents Smart & Safe Florida, told Cooper the committee did not seek sign-off on the form mailed to voters because the petition was identical to the one approved by the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t request a change because there was no change to the layout,\u201d Burhans, an attorney with the Stearns Weaver Miller firm, argued. \u201cAnybody \u2026 would say these are identical. There\u2019s no change within the border of the document.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that state election laws and regulations \u201cshould be strictly construed,\u201d Cooper said he \u201cwavered back and forth\u201d on how to rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Mr. Gibson has pointed out to my satisfaction the statutory provision that says if one is not using the forms prescribed by the secretary of state, then they are not valid,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n

Smart & Safe Florida appeared to engage in a procedure \u201cin good faith to comply with the law and get to the requisite number of petitions they need to get on the ballot,\u201d Cooper observed.<\/p>\n

The crux of the case was whether the form that was approved by Byrd\u2019s office \u201cwas changed and whether that change was material,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was a change made to the approved petition because it has the language on the back,\u201d he said. \u201cI define layout as what happened here. … What happened on the back of that first form, that\u2019s a change of layout. Therefore it\u2019s a material change that was not approved by the secretary of state, therefore I must find that petitions that were at issue here \u2026 with that change, are not enforceable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart and Safe Florida officials said they intend to appeal Cooper\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fervently but respectfully disagree with this ruling and fully intend to appeal it as voters deserve and overwhelmingly want to have their voices heard on this important matter,\u201d the committee said in a text message.<\/p>\n

While Smart & Safe Florida is required to submit 880,062 valid signatures by Feb. 1, Burhans told Cooper that the deadline is functionally a month earlier because supervisors of elections need 30 days to process petitions. According to the state Division of Elections website, the committee had submitted 675,307 valid signatures as of Friday \u2014 including the disputed 200,000 petitions. The number of valid signatures appeared to be dropping this week: The website showed 675,334 valid signatures on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Byrd\u2019s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to the committee about the disputed petitions in March. A new law that went into effect in July requires that the full text of the amendment be included on the petition.<\/p>\n

The new law also required county supervisors of elections to stop processing petition signatures for a 90-day period, which ended Sept. 30 \u2014 days before Matthews\u2019 missive.<\/p>\n

Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024 led efforts to defeat a proposed recreational marijuana amendment<\/a> sponsored by Smart & Safe Florida. With the committee taking another run at the issue in 2026, it has clashed with Byrd on a number of fronts.<\/p>\n

Byrd\u2019s office on Monday took initial steps<\/a> to trigger Florida Supreme Court review of the measure, a crucial step in ballot placement.<\/p>\n

That move came on the last day of a deadline set by justices for the DeSantis administration to respond to a lawsuit <\/a>filed by Smart & Safe Florida accusing elections officials of improperly holding up the ballot measure.<\/p>\n

During arguments Friday, Gibson reminded Cooper of problems with the 2000 presidential election, which spawned a protracted legal battle over a recount in Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a state as large and diverse as Florida,\u201d with 67 county supervisors of elections, \u201cit is vitally important that we have uniformity in the interpretation of the election code,\u201d Gibson argued.<\/p>\n

Burhans disputed some of the state\u2019s arguments by pointing to a classic scene from a Marx Brothers movie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are you going to believe, the secretary or your own eyes?\u201d Burhans asked Cooper.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the phrase goes, your lyin\u2019 eyes,\u201d Cooper quipped.<\/p>\n

Gibson referred to the exchange later in the day, after arguments that included numerous references to the movie, \u201cMy Cousin Vinny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very clear that (in) the original form approved, the layout was blank on the back. The petition form that was provided in the mail \u2026 has words on the back,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cI\u2019m not good at movie quotes \u2026 but you can see with your own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Dara Kam, News Service of Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Siding with Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration, a Leon County circuit judge on Friday ruled that state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35140,35139,2683,28,30,29,35142,35143,35141,21249],"class_list":["post-56844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-ben-gibson","tag-circuit-judge-john-cooper","tag-desantis","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-glenn-burhans","tag-maria-matthews","tag-petition-signatures","tag-recreational-marijuana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56844","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=56844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}