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Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
In court hearing, attorneys debate palatability of new restrictions on citizens' initiatives
Florida Decides Healthcare Executive Director Mitch Emerson talks to reporters in Tallahassee outside the federal courthouse May 22, 2025. (Photo by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix) A federal court hearing held Thursday to determine the fate of Florida's strict new law on ballot initiatives veered into culinary criticism as an attorney compared the measure to 'sausage.' Attorneys for the DeSantis administration insisted that sausage is edible while those on the other side called it 'rancid.' Florida legislators passed the law after citizens' initiatives to allow abortion and recreational pot nearly passed last November. Critics contend that the new law — with all of its restrictions on groups and who can collect signatures — will make it nearly impossible for outside organizations to ever place an initiative on the ballot in the future. Groups have challenged the new law — which was a top priority for Gov. Ron DeSantis — on grounds that it violates their rights to free speech and due process. During the hearing, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker listened to about three hours of testimony on Florida Decides Healthcare's and Smart & Safe Florida's request that he block certain provisions of the law while the legal challenge moves ahead — including a requirement that sponsors turn in completed petitions within 10 days after the voter signs the petition, as well as stepped up fines and criminal penalties. Walker, who posed pointed questions to both sides, asked everyone to 'please be patient,' as he considers his ruling. Florida Decides is behind a campaign to put a Medicaid expansion on the ballot in November 2026. Smart & Safe Florida is behind a renewed initiative to make recreational marijuana legal for adults in Florida. Both groups need to collect and certify 880,000 voter signatures before Feb. 1 of next year to make the November 2026 ballot. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Tallahassee attorney Glenn Burhans Jr. said that, prior to the new law taking effect, Smart & Safe Florida was collecting 78,000 signatures per week. Since the law took effect, he said, the group is collecting between 12,000 and 15,000 signatures per week. He said that 1,100 petition circulators who were out in the field have been 'lost' due to the law with its felony penalties. 'That places the ability to get this on the ballot in peril,' he said. Burhans noted that the law not only condenses the time to submit a petition, it doesn't allow for the period to be extended to account for office closures or holidays — the Legislature, he noted, rejected such extensions. That means petition collectors could have as little as seven days to turn in the forms, he said. Burhans used the coming Memorial Day Weekend as an example, noting that supervisors of elections offices will be closed from May 24-27. If Smart& Safe Florida collected 1,700 signatures on May 16 but didn't deliver them before an office closed, it could face fines of upward of $255,000 ($85,000 a day times three days). 'Your honor, that's real life. That's impact,' he said. Tallahassee attorney Mohammad Jazil, representing Secretary of State Cord Byrd, said that the timeline was condensed from 30 days to 10 days to give the supervisors of elections more time to review the petitions and sniff out fraudulent forms. The state intends to keep language in its rules and regulations that would allow sponsors to deliver petitions outside the 10-day time frame for holidays and office closures, Jazil said. Walker pressed Jazil on some points, such as what constitutes personal identifying information that must be placed on the petitions. Jazil defended HB 1205 and at one point noted that legislation being made was like watching sausage get made — a famously distasteful process. Jazil joked that this sausage, HB 1205, was edible. 'Sometimes the sausage aren't real tasty, that's why we have challenges here,' Walker replied. In his rebuttal, Burhans said the law bans supervisors from reviewing ballots between July 1 and September 1. That, he said, doesn't give supervisors more time, but instead creates a 90-day log jam. Additionally, Burhans stressed that HB 1205 specifically removed language from statute allowing for extensions for holidays and office closures. Agencies cannot promulgate rules contrary to law, he said. 'The sausage is not only bad, it's rancid and filled with maggots,' Burhans said. Mitch Emerson, executive director of Florida Decides Healthcare, told reporters following the hearing that he was optimistic. 'We had the opportunity to make it very clear why this law is unconstitutional and un-American. This isn't just about one campaign. It's about protecting every Floridian's right,' he said. Blocking the law, he continued, would return the state to the existing rules that petition gathers have relied on for years. 'This means giving people back the ability to organize, gather signatures, and bring issues directly to the ballot without fear, confusion.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Florida ballot initiatives law draws immediate challenge
Backers of a ballot proposal aimed at expanding Medicaid coverage in Florida quickly filed a lawsuit Sunday challenging a measure approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature that imposes additional hurdles on the citizen-initiative process, arguing it erects 'unconstitutional barriers to political engagement and public discourse.' The measure (HB 1205), finalized Friday by lawmakers and immediately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, includes changes that make it harder for paid and volunteer signature gatherers to collect petitions, creates new crimes and heightens existing penalties for wrongdoing and shortens the time frame for petitions to be returned to supervisors of elections' offices. Attorneys for Florida Decides Healthcare, a political committee behind the proposed Medicaid expansion, filed a federal lawsuit challenging numerous parts of the law. Other plaintiffs are Mitch Emerson, the committee's campaign manager, and Jordan Simmons, a Missouri resident who is a project director for the committee. Plaintiffs are represented by lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Elias Law Group LLP, a nationally renowned election-law firm. The Legislature passed the law after hard-fought battles last fall over proposed ballot initiatives seeking to allow recreational marijuana and ensure abortion rights. DeSantis led crusades to defeat the measures, which failed to receive 60 percent approval required to pass, and pushed state lawmakers to impose stricter regulations on the ballot-initiative process. The lawsuit focuses on seven categories of changes in the law, including provisions that restrict petition circulator eligibility; require circulators to re-register after July 1; impose a 90-day suspension of signature verification later this year; shorten from 30 to 10 days the time circulators have to return petitions; impose fines for wrongdoing; and require sponsors of initiatives to start from scratch if the Florida Supreme Court rejects what is known as a 'financial impact statement' telling voters how much the proposal would cost. The changes targeted in the lawsuit 'individually and in combination, chill protected speech, deter participation in the initiative process, and impose unconstitutional barriers to political engagement and public discourse,' the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote. The lawsuit contended that the changes already are having a chilling effect and creating confusion. 'In practice, the law's overly broad and indiscriminate restrictions suggest that its true purpose is not to safeguard against fraud or promote transparency, but to suppress citizen-led ballot initiatives that may conflict with the policy preferences of the current legislative majority,' the lawsuit said. The changes add more burdens 'to an already oppressive framework, exponentially compounding the procedural hurdles, financial obligations, and compelled disclosures that have come to define Florida's initiative process,' the lawsuit said. Republican lawmakers, backed by business groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce, have passed a series of measures over the years to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives. They argue, in part, that policy decisions should be decided in the Legislature, not through amending the Constitution. State Republican Chairman Evan Power issued a statement Monday that said such 'lawsuits are nothing more than political actions from groups that can't win in the Legislature, so they're trying to buy their way onto the ballot.' 'This shady, profit-driven petition industry has operated in the shadows for too long — weakening confidence in our constitutional amendment process,' Power said. 'HB 1205 puts a stop to that and ensures that future ballot initiatives are legitimate, transparent, and secure.' But attorneys for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit wrote that backers of ballot initiatives 'now confront an even more costly and complex regulatory regime that suffocates their ability to communicate ideas, mobilize supporters, and engage in core political speech, and will likely eliminate their ability to effectively advocate for citizen-led initiatives.' The law requires signature gatherers to be Florida residents and U.S. citizens who have not been convicted of felonies or who have had their voting rights restored. Out-of-state workers and non-U.S. citizens who are in the country legally would not be able to collect signatures, either by volunteering or being paid. 'These restrictions dramatically narrow the field of eligible participants, making it more difficult for sponsors to reach voters across the state — especially in communities where these individuals may be among the most motivated and effective advocates, impairing the ability of both sponsors and supporters to associate freely in support,' the lawsuit said. The measure also would cap how many completed petitions unregistered signature-gatherers could possess and make violations of the restriction a felony. Unregistered people would be allowed to possess petitions for themselves, 25 other people and certain family members. Petitions collected by ineligible people or unregistered individuals who violate the 25-petition cap would not be counted toward the number of signatures required for ballot placement. The eligibility requirements 'put sponsors in the impossible position of bearing legal and financial risk for facts they may not be able to ascertain' and 'places significant administrative burdens on initiative sponsors and exposes them to substantial penalties — even when they act in good faith,' the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also challenges part of the law requiring elections officials to suspend verification of signatures from July 1 through Sept. 30. Groups have until Feb. 1 to submit more than 880,000 valid signatures for initiatives to be placed on the November 2026 ballot. The verification freeze comes in the middle of the signature-collecting process and halts 'a core procedural step essential to the exercise of First Amendment-protected activities,' the plaintiffs' lawyers argued. Supporters of the new law relied heavily on a voluminous report by the state Office of Elections Crimes and Security that found dozens of instances of wrongdoing by petition-signature gatherers who worked on the abortion and marijuana proposals last year. 'We're doing this because we want to reduce the bad actions, we want to reduce the fraud, we want to reduce the opportunities for people to pervert the system,' Senate sponsor Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican and former Senate president, said during debate on the measure Friday. But the lawsuit filed Sunday argued that the new law isn't narrowly tailored enough to meet constitutional muster. 'It does not meaningfully deter fraud, enhance transparency, or protect voters. Instead, it imposes unnecessary, vague, and punitive restrictions that suppress First Amendment activity and deter meaningful participation in Florida's citizen-led initiative process,' the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote in the 74-page lawsuit. In addition to shortening from 30 days to 10 days the length of time signature gatherers have to submit petitions to supervisors of elections, the law increases penalties for late-filed petitions. Sponsors face $50 per day fines for each petition that is turned in late, and up to $2,500 per day fines for 'willful' violations of the time restriction. Completed petitions must be turned into supervisors of elections offices in the county where the voter resides, regardless of where they were signed. The 'cumulative financial exposure' facing initiative sponsors 'is staggering, and it will deter sponsors from participating in the initiative process altogether,' the lawsuit said. The new law also could have an impact on a revived effort to allow the use of recreational marijuana. The Smart & Safe Florida political committee that is backing the proposal has collected more than 200,000 signatures to put the issue on the 2026 ballot. 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