Florida legal pot campaign sues state for trying to remove 200k petitions

Romy Ellenbogen, Tampa Bay Times on Oct 20, 2025

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida group pushing to legalize recreational marijuana is accusing the state of meddling with its ability to get the issue in front of voters.

Smart & Safe Florida, a political committee trying to again put a recreational marijuana constitutional amendment on the ballot, filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Cord Byrd last week, accusing him of trying to invalidate about 200,000 petitions without any basis in law.

Those petitions make up about one-third of the verified signatures the campaign has collected so far. To get its proposal in front of voters, Smart & Safe needs about 880,000 valid petitions by Feb. 1.

At issue are thousands of petitions the campaign sent directly to voters early this year. The mailers included two petitions, a prepaid return envelope and a campaign card.

The petitions had a link on the back directing voters to the full amendment text, but the package sent by Smart & Safe Florida included only a summary of the proposed amendment.

Maria Matthews, the director of the Division of Elections, emailed all county elections supervisors earlier this month, saying that the forms that had been mailed to voters should be invalidated.

Matthews said the group violated a rule requiring a petition’s layout to be approved, and a rule that a copy of the full text of the amendment shall be “provided or displayed” to a voter before signing the petition.

“Therefore, none of the offending petitions should be verified as valid,” Matthews said in her email.

But Smart & Safe Florida argued that there is no statute in Florida requiring that the full text be displayed to a voter.

It said the rule Matthews cited does not define “provided or displayed.” The amendment group said the Department of State is trying to unlawfully create new criteria for validating signatures.

The campaign packaged the mailers so that the link directing people to the full amendment text would be the first thing visible, according to the lawsuit. It also argues that printing the link on the back does not change the layout of the petition form.

“We are asking the court to enforce Florida law, it’s really that simple,” the campaign said in a statement. “The State is wrongly attempting to change the rules after-the-fact and deny these registered voters their voice in the process.”

Smart & Safe Florida filed the lawsuit in Leon County. It is asking a judge to declare that Byrd does not have the ability to demand the petitions be invalidated. The lawsuit also challenges Mark Earley, the supervisor of elections for Leon County.

A spokesperson for the Department of State did not immediately return a request for comment. The lawsuit was first reported by Politico.

Smart & Safe Florida has faced the state before during its push last year for Amendment 3, a similar proposal to legalize recreational marijuana. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration used state power to fight the amendment, which ultimately failed despite receiving the majority of voter support.

Like last year, this year’s proposed amendment would allow adults to legally buy and possess a certain amount of marijuana. But this year’s proposed amendment has some tweaks, including language saying that smoking pot in public would be prohibited.

The group so far has raised about $26 million this cycle, the bulk of which is from the marijuana company Trulieve.

Smart & Safe Florida is also a party in a lawsuit over changes the Legislature made to the petition process. The lawsuit alleges the changes make ballot initiative campaigns more expensive and inaccessible.