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.