Florida Supreme Court Cancels Legalization Campaign’s Ballot Text Review, Citing Low Signatures

The Smart & Safe Florida campaign’s future is looking dire after the state
Supreme Court decided not to hear oral arguments in its case, the Daily
Business Review reports.

Attorney General James Uthmeier said the campaign, which aims to put an
adult-use cannabis legalization amendment on the 2026 ballot, was about
100,000 signatures short of the required 880,062 signatures as of the
February 1 deadline, and requested that the Supreme Court drop its Thursday
hearing to consider the ballot text. On Wednesday, the justices voted 6-1
to cancel oral arguments in the case, which is a mandatory step in the
process of reaching the ballot.

However, a Smart & Safe Florida campaign spokesperson noted that “final and
complete county-by-county totals for validated petitions are not yet
reported,” and the campaign is challenging last-minute changes in state law
aimed at making it more difficult for citizen-led amendments to reach the
ballot.

“Today’s order does not decide the merits of Smart & Safe’s ballot
language, and it leaves open the possibility for the court to review the
ballot language once the pending disputes over tens of thousands of
wrongfully invalidated petitions have been resolved.” — Campaign statement,
in an email

Officials last year rejected about 70,000 of the submitted signatures under
a new state law that restricts petition groups, making it more difficult
for citizen-led amendments to reach the ballot.

The campaign is scheduled to go to trial on February 9 in an effort to
preserve those signatures, arguing that the law infringes on political
speech, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

“We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe, when they are all
counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot,” a campaign
spokesperson said earlier in the week.