A federal judge has delivered a win to a Florida campaign seeking to put a marijuana legalization initiative on the state’s 2026 ballot—granting “complete relief” from provisions of a law Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed to impose serious restrictions on signature gathering.
In response to a motion for a preliminary injunction from the cannabis campaign Smart & Safe Florida, a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida judge ruled on Thursday that the state’s law forces plaintiffs to “choose between curtailing their First Amendment rights” or “risk invalidation of verified petitions, crippling civil penalties, and further enforcement actions.”
While the law DeSantis signed in May wasn’t directly targeted at the cannabis initiative, there’s been concern among supporters that it could jeopardize an already complex and costly process to collect enough signatures to make the ballot. That’s because it would block non-residents and non-citizens from collecting signatures for ballot measures.
The governor had pitched the idea to lawmakers earlier this year, calling for changes to the petition gathering process that threaten to further complicate citizen-led reform efforts for a range of issues.
But presented with a legal challenge to the policy from several advocacy groups, including the cannabis campaign, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker determined that certain of the restrictions are unlawful.
The judge last month upheld much of the law, as The Tallahassee Democrat reported, but he said in his latest ruling that preventing signature gathering from non-residents amounted to an unacceptably “severe burden on political expression.”
The court said Smart & Safe Florida “demonstrated that it is substantially likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim challenging the State Attorneys’ role in enforcing the residency requirement.”
“The challenged provisions work an unconstitutional restriction as applied to Plaintiffs’ speech by prohibiting non-citizen and non-residents from gathering signed petitions by silencing the individual non-citizen petition circulators who are Plaintiffs in this case, and by preventing the organizational Plaintiffs’ members or employees who are non-residents or non-citizens from engaging in the core political speech of petition circulation.”
Walker wrote that the threat the restrictions could be enforced against the cannabis campaign is “a cognizable chill on Smart & Safe’s non-resident petition circulator’s speech, which directly injures Smart & Safe, as sponsor of the marijuana ballot initiative.”
As of now, the marijuana campaign has collected more than 75 percent of the required signatures to make the ballot next year.
Smart & Safe Florida began signature gathering for the measure in January, making steady progress as takes a second stab at enacting the constitutional amendment at the ballot after a 2024 version of the legalization measure fell short.
Activists picked up about 50,000 more valid signatures over the last month for a total of 661,327, according to the Florida Division of Elections. They need 880,062 valid signatures to secure ballot placement.
In addition to that signature total from registered voters, Smart & Safe Florida must also gather them from a minimum of 8 percent of voters in at least half of the state’s congressional districts. The campaign has currently exceeded the needed threshold in five of the 28 districts, but is close in several others.
In June, the state affirmed that the campaign collected enough for the 2026 initiative to trigger a fiscal and judicial review.
The governor said in February that the newest measure is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting it will be blocked from going before voters next year.
“There’s a lot of different perspectives on on marijuana,” DeSantis said. “It should not be in our Constitution. If you feel strongly about it, you have elections for the legislature. Go back candidates that you believe will be able to deliver what your vision is on that.”
“But when you put these things in the Constitution—and I think, I mean, the way they wrote, there’s all kinds of things going on in here. I think it’s going to have big time trouble getting through the Florida Supreme Court,” he said.
At its current signature count, the campaign has already succeeded in reaching one of the first milestones. The state is now statutorily obligated to conduct a judicial and financial review of the measure that will determine its legal eligibility and inform the electorate about its potential economic impact.
The latest initiative was filed with the secretary of state’s office just months after the initial version failed during the November 2024 election—despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Smart & Safe Florida is hoping the revised version will succeed in 2026. The campaign—which in the last election cycle received tens of millions of dollars from cannabis industry stakeholders, principally the multi-state operator Trulieve—incorporated certain changes into the new version that seem responsive to criticism opponents raised during the 2024 push.
For example, it now specifically states that the “smoking and vaping of marijuana in any public place is prohibited.”Another section asserts that the legislature would need to approve rules dealing with the “regulation of the time, place, and manner of the public consumption of marijuana.”
Last year, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney general. It’s not entirely clear why he feels this version would face a different outcome.
While there’s uncertainty around how the state’s highest court will navigate the measure, a poll released in February showed overwhelming bipartisan voter support for the reform—with 67 percent of Florida voters backing legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
However, the results conflict with another recent poll from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, a proactive opponent of legalization, that found majority support for the reform among likely voter (53 percent) but not enough to be enacted under the 60 percent requirement.
Another recent poll of Florida Republican voters showed just 40 percent of that demographic said they’d vote in favor of the legalization proposal.
In the background of the campaign’s signature development, DeSantis signed a GOP-led bill in June to impose significant restrictions on the ability to put initiatives on the ballot—a plan that could impair efforts to let voters decide on marijuana legalization next year.
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Separately, a Florida GOP senator claimed recently that the legalization campaign “tricked” Trump into supporting the 2024 measure by misleading him and the general public about key provisions.
Ahead of the election, Trump said in September that he felt Amendment 3 was “going to be very good” for the state.
Before making the comments, Trump met with the CEO of Trulieve, Kim Rivers, as well as with a GOP state senator who is in favor of the reform.
While Trump endorsed the Florida cannabis initiative—as well as federal rescheduling and industry banking access—he has since been silent on cannabis issues. On Thursday, however, the CEO of Scotts Miracle Gro said Trump has privately committed to seeing through the rescheduling process in “multiple” conversations since taking office.
Meanwhile in Florida, some medical marijuana patients and caregivers in Florida could see their state cannabis registrations revoked under a bill recently signed into law by the governor.
DeSantis approved SB 2514, a broad budget bill that touches on cancer, dentistry and other health-related matters. But it also contains a provision that directs the state Department of Health (DOH) to cancel registrations of medical marijuana patients and caregivers if they’re convicted of—or plead guilty or no contest to—criminal drug charges.
Read the federal court’s order in the Florida medical marijuana and ballot law case below:
Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
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