‘Onerous and unconstitutional’

The groups allege that the law violates their rights to political expression, free association and due process under the Constitution's First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

 In their federal complaint filed May 14, LWVFL and LULAC said the new law “launches an assault” against Floridians who want to change laws through popular initiatives by imposing “near-insurmountable costs, a myriad administrative difficulties, and unrealistic deadlines, all while adding new forms of criminal liability through vague and widely drawn provisions.”

For instance, the complaint said volunteers who collect more than 25 petitions from outside their families must now register as circulators, undergo training, and comply with new disclosure and oath requirements. Previously, circulators were defined as those who were compensated for collecting signatures. The new law also prohibits non-citizens, felons whose voting rights haven’t been restored, and non-residents of the state from circulating petitions.

“Collectively and individually, each of these requirements is onerous and unconstitutional,” according to the lawsuit.

In its May 21 complaint, RTCW, which identifies itself as a grassroots organization campaigning to put a clean water initiative on the ballot next year, said the law’s new requirements would restrict the “constitutionally protected core political speech” of its all-volunteer group.

The new law, the complaint said, is “another chapter in the Florida Legislature’s history of imposing suffocating restrictions … that make it nearly impossible for ordinary residents of Florida organizing grassroots campaigns to amend the state constitution.” It said only “politically connected and well-financed campaigns have any hope of success.”

On its website, RTCW said it has suspended collection operations because of the law’s burdensome regulations and vagueness.  

FDH, which is seeking to expand Medicaid through a 2026 ballot measure, sued the state shortly after HB 1205 was signed into law. At the time, the nonprofit told The Associated Press that it had collected 100,000 of the required 880,000 verified petitions ahead of the Feb. 1, 2026, deadline, but HB 1205 will add millions more dollars in costs to the campaign.

FDH said, in the May 4 complaint, that it “faces the real and imminent threat of being unable to continue its operations” because the law “creates intolerable uncertainty” by exposing the group to “ruinous civil and criminal penalties” that could completely shut down its campaign.

In its May 14 filing seeking a preliminary injunction, the Medicaid advocacy group said if a petition’s sponsor or circulator fails to deliver a petition to the proper county elections supervisor within 10 days of the voter’s signature, the sponsor could be fined $50 per day of delay, regardless of the reason. If a petition is delivered to the wrong county, the sponsor may be fined $500 per petition, with an additional $5,000 fine per petition if it is “willfully” delivered to the wrong county.

“Insurmountable barrier”

During the May 22, 3½ hour hearing on the preliminary injunction, Nicholas Steiner, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center representing FDH, told Walker that the restrictions created an “insurmountable barrier” to put proposals on the ballot, reported News Service of Florida (NSF).

“It’s making it impossible, really, for FDH to engage with the target audience,” he said. Safe & Smart Florida’s Glenn Burhans argued that the new restrictions, such as the 10-day deadline to submit signed petitions to the proper county elections supervisor, are designed to squash speech and thwart the amendment process. Since the law took effect, he said his organization’s petition collections and workforce have shrunk. The judge asked Burhans whether the decline in petitions and the smaller workforce could be attributed to waning support for the marijuana initiative, according to NSF. Burhans responded that the proposal has “broad support” among Floridians, receiving nearly 6 million votes in November.

An attorney representing the state, Mohammad Jazil, told the judge that it’s the legislature’s job to regulate the amendment process. For instance, Jazil said that a 10-day timeframe to submit signed petitions to county elections supervisors, which was reduced from 30 days, would give them more time to validate petitions, as they’d be dropped off in batches of hundreds, reducing backlog.

FDH Executive Director Mitch Emerson told reporters later, according to NSF, that he believed Walker would rule in their favor. “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,” he said.

SIDEBAR: Chipping away at "direct democracy"

Florida is one of 16 states that allows its citizens to practice this form of “direct democracy,” in which they can petition to change the state constitution without legislative approval.

Since the state adopted the citizen-led referendum process in the late 1960s, Floridians have adopted 32 of the 42 proposed amendments, including government sunshine laws (1976), the right of privacy (1980), free universal pre-K (2002), $15 minimum wage (2004 and 2020), a fair redistricting process (2010), medical marijuana legalization (2016), and voting rights restoration for felons who've completed their sentences (2018).

However, Florida legislators have chipped away at the citizen-led amendment process over the last several years.

For instance, in 2006, Florida voters passed a ballot initiative that raised the threshold to pass proposed amendments from 50 percent to 60 percent. The legislature had passed a resolution the prior year, sponsoring that proposal.

In 2024, DeSantis railed against two proposed citizen-led constitutional amendments: one was the recreational marijuana proposal and the other would have enshrined abortion rights. The governor openly led a campaign using taxpayer dollars to defeat both proposals in the November election. Both fell just short of the 60 percent voter threshold needed to change the constitution.

Just before the November vote, a DeSantis-backed government report alleged fraud in the signature-gathering process for the abortion ballot. The 348-page report urged the legislature to consider measures to regulate the citizen-led ballot process, reported The Tallahassee Democrat.

In September, a month before that government report was released, DeSantis alleged that some of the petitions that were collected for the abortion-rights ballot initiative were fraudulent.

“We now know that there are signatures that have been accepted by some of the Supervisors that don’t match the voter file, so they are investigating this, as they should,” he said at the time when asked about the state’s election crimes unit seeking information from local election supervisors about petitions.