The city of Miami’s proposal to delay its general municipal election scheduled for this November until next year without voter approval has been ruled unconstitutional by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal.
In its ruling Thursday, the court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the city had violated both its own charter and the Miami-Dade County Home Rule Charter when it voted last month to postpone the November 2025 mayoral and commission election.
On June 26, the Miami City Commission passed an ordinance delaying the balloting for one year, until November 2026, on a 3-2 vote, with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez signing the ordinance into law. The move extended the terms of Suarez and a sitting commissioner beyond their term limits.
Advocates argued the change would align with statewide elections, lowering costs and increasing voter turnout. But critics, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, maintained it was a power grab giving elected officials an extra year in office without accountability to the voters.
Mayoral candidate Emilio Gonzalez filed a lawsuit on June 30, and Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr ruled in his favor on July 21.
“[T]he City may not enact an ordinance which effectively amends its Charter without submission of the issue to the will and vote of its constituents by referendum, as required by both the City and the Miami-Dade County Charters. Therefore, as the trial court properly declared, the Ordinance is unconstitutional,” the court wrote in its opinion.
Making the same points that Miami officials made about saving money and increasing voter turnout, the city of St. Petersburg changed the date of its municipal election from November 2025 until November of 2026, but only after that change was approved by the voters in a charter amendment in 2022.
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