“Fear and uncertainty” about a new law targeting the state’s ballot-initiative process has led to a significant drop in people working to collect signatures for 2026 ballot measures, groups challenging the law told a federal judge on Thursday.
One of the most-controversial parts of the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature on May 2 and immediately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, shortens from 30 to 10 days the length of time to submit signed petitions to supervisors of elections.
In addition, the law (HB 1205) includes hefty fines for petitions that are filed late and makes it a felony for petition gatherers to retain voters’ personal information on petitions or make changes to completed petitions. Groups accused of “substantial irregularities” in the petition process could face racketeering charges.
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Florida Decides Healthcare, a committee sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expanding Medicaid coverage, quickly filed the lawsuit this month to challenge parts of the law. Smart & Safe Florida, a committee behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational marijuana, also is a plaintiff in the case. A similar marijuana proposal narrowly failed to pass in November, and the committee is trying to go back to voters in 2026.
The groups on Thursday asked Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker for a preliminary injunction to block parts of the law, including the 10-day deadline. Lawyers for the groups argue in part, that the provisions unconstitutionally “chill” political speech.
The shortened time frame to submit petitions combined with the risk of fines for late submissions have erected an “insurmountable barrier” for placement of initiatives on the 2026 ballot, Nicholas Steiner, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center who represents Florida Decides Healthcare, told Walker.
“It’s making it impossible, really, for FDH (Florida Decides Healthcare) to engage with the target audience,” he said.
The 10-day turnaround “has zero relation to fighting fraud or preserving ballot integrity,” Glenn Burhans, an attorney for Smart & Safe Florida, argued.
The purpose of the quick turnaround “is to squash the initiative process, pure and simple. It’s stamping on speech,” Burhans said.
Smart & Safe Florida has submitted more than 217,000 valid petition signatures to state elections officials, just shy of the 220,000 signatures that would trigger Florida Supreme Court review of the pot proposal and a required financial analysis. Groups need to submit roughly 880,000 signatures by Feb. 1 to make it on the November 2026 ballot.
But Burhans pointed to a document filed Wednesday saying that Smart & Safe Florida’s petition collections and workforce have shrunk since parts of the law, including the 10-day deadline, began taking effect this month.
The group was collecting roughly 78,000 petitions a week and expected to surpass the 880,000 threshold by the end of June, according to a declaration by Meghan Cox, the founder and CEO of Groundgame Political Solutions, LLC. Cox’s company provides ballot-initiative services to Smart & Safe Florida.
Cox said the number of petitions has dropped to between 12,000 to 15,000 a week.
In addition, the number of paid workers shrank by 1,100 since the law went into effect, an 85 percent workforce drop, “and we don’t know if we will gather enough to get on the ballot by the end of the year,” Cox’s declaration said.
Walker on Thursday asked Burhans whether the drop in workers or completed petitions could be attributed to a decline in support for the marijuana initiative.
Burhans said the proposal has “broad support” among voters.
He noted that last year’s marijuana measure, which appeared as Amendment 3 on the November ballot, received more than 5.9 million votes, which surpassed the votes for DeSantis when he was re-elected in 2022. Nearly 57 percent of Floridians voted for the marijuana measure, short of the 60 percent approval required to pass.
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After leading crusades to help defeat the marijuana measure and a proposal that would have placed abortion rights in the state Constitution, DeSantis called on the Legislature to make changes to the ballot-initiative process.
Many Republican leaders and groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce have long argued that policy decisions should be made by the Legislature, not through amending the Constitution.
Burhans argued that the new law is designed to “undercut the success Amendment 3” had last year.
Mohammad Jazil, an attorney who represents the state, told Walker that the Legislature has the authority to establish regulations for the ballot-initiative process.
The judge pressed him about part of the law restricting groups from retaining “personal information,” which the plaintiffs maintain is vague and overbroad.
The Legislature “is the sausage makers,” Jazil said.
But Walker said that, in more than one previous case, he’s found that the sausage is “just nasty.”
“Sometimes the sausage they produce down the street (in the Capitol) is nasty and they shouldn’t serve it,” Walker observed.
“The question is, is the sausage edible,” Jazil responded.
The 10-day timeline, Jazil said, would give supervisors more time to validate petitions, which groups sometimes drop off in bundles of hundreds. The shortened timeframe could prevent a logjam for local elections officials, Jazil said.
But Burhans referred to another part of the law that freezes supervisors of elections’ validation of petitions from July 1 through Sept. 30, which he said “cuts directly against the excuse” that the 10-day turnaround helps supervisors.
“The sausage is not only bad, it’s rancid and it’s filled with maggots,” Burhans said.
Florida Decides Healthcare has “seen a lot of direct impacts” from the new law, Ben Stafford,who represents the committee, told reporters after Thursday’s hearing.
“Not just some of the logistical hurdles and impossibilities that were laid out in the arguments, but real Floridians are saying they are simply not comfortable participating in a process that might now expose them to felony convictions for things where they are not attempting to do anything wrong,” Stafford, an attorney with the Elias Law Group LLP, said.
Other groups that have joined the lawsuit include the League of Women Voters of Florida. Walker on Wednesday granted a request by backers of a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at protecting clean water to also join the lawsuit.
Walker did not immediately rule on the preliminary injunction, but Mitch Emerson, executive director of Florida Decides Healthcare, said he was hopeful the judge will grant the request to block the law.
“It’s about protecting every Floridian’s right to have a voice in our democracy. We are optimistic that the court will grant the request for a preliminary injunction and restore the rules that have governed the ballot initiative process for years,” Emerson told reporters.
