TALLAHASSEE — Dealing a blow to supporters of a proposed recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment, an appeals court has rejected a challenge to directives by Secretary of State Cord Byrd to invalidate more than 70,000 petition signatures.
A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal on Friday issued a 10-page opinion that sided with Byrd in a lawsuit filed by the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is trying to submit enough petition signatures by a Feb. 1 deadline to put the pot proposal on the November ballot.
Smart & Safe Florida on Sunday filed an emergency motion for the full appeals court to consider the case.
READ MORE: After lawsuit pressure, Florida advances marijuana amendment toward 2026 ballot
Smart & Safe Florida filed a lawsuit last month in Leon County circuit court challenging two directives by Byrd’s office to county supervisors of elections. One directed invalidation of 41,894 signatures of what are known as “inactive” votes; the other directed invalidation of 28,752 signatures collected by petition gatherers who were not Florida residents, according to the appeals court opinion.
Circuit Judge Jonathan Sjostrom ruled that the petitions signed by inactive voters should not be invalidated but upheld the state’s decision on invalidating petitions collected by non-residents. Smart & Safe Florida and Byrd’s office both appealed to the Tallahassee-based appeals court.
The panel’s opinion overturned Sjostrom’s ruling on the inactive voters and upheld his ruling on the petitions gathered by non-residents — with the net effect of allowing both directives to invalidate signatures.
Smart & Safe Florida must submit at least 880,062 valid signatures statewide and meet signature thresholds in congressional districts by Feb. 1 to put the issue on the ballot. The state Division of Elections website Sunday showed 714,888 valid signatures, though Smart & Safe Florida also has been battling separately in court with the state about whether the website has been updated to provide an accurate number of verified signatures.
The proposed amendment would allow adults ages 21 and older to use recreational marijuana. A similar ballot proposal in 2024 fell short of receiving the required 60 percent voter approval to pass, after Gov. Ron DeSantis led efforts to defeat the measure.
Part of the legal battle involved a Dec. 23 directive by the state to county elections supervisors to invalidate petitions signed by inactive voters. Such voters remain registered to vote but are considered inactive because mail sent to them was undeliverable and their addresses weren’t confirmed. Inactive voters can be removed from the voter rolls if they don’t vote in two general elections, update their registrations or request vote-by-mail ballots.
Smart & Safe Florida contended that inactive voters’ petitions should not be invalidated because they remain registered voters. But Byrd’s attorneys argued the directive was valid and pointed to it being part of state efforts to prevent petition fraud.
The appeals court opinion did not directly decide the issue about inactive voters remaining registered voters. Instead, it agreed with an argument by Byrd’s attorneys that Sjostrom erred when he “declared that the secretary’s written directions to the supervisors were ‘unlawful, void ab initio, and without legal effect.’”
“There was nothing unlawful about the secretary’s providing written directions to the supervisors on how to perform their official duties to verify petitions submitted by inactive voters,” the opinion, written by Judge Lori Rowe and joined by Judges Susan Kelsey and Robert Long, said. “Rather, the secretary had specific statutory authority to provide directions to supervisors on how they should perform their official duties.”
The other part of the lawsuit, involving out-of-state petition gatherers, was tangled in a separate federal-court fight about a law passed in 2025.
The law prohibited non-Florida residents from collecting signatures for ballot proposals. Groups including Smart & Safe Florida challenged the law in federal court, and U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in July issued a preliminary injunction to block it.
After the injunction was issued, Smart & Safe Florida used out-of-state petition gatherers. But in September, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of Walker’s injunction — effectively allowing the law to be enforced while the legal battle continues.
Smart & Safe Florida’s circuit-court lawsuit alleged that Byrd’s office improperly directed invalidating petitions collected by out-of-state petition gatherers during the period when the injunction was in effect. It said the out-of-state workers “were validly registered by the Division (of Elections) and lawfully gathered petitions during a roughly two-month period when a preliminary injunction was in force.”
But Byrd’s attorneys pushed back, contending that Walker’s preliminary injunction “did not remove the relevant statutes from Florida law or render those circulators eligible, even on a temporary basis.”
In upholding Sjostrom’s ruling on the non-resident petition gatherers issue, the appeals court offered similar reasoning as in its decision about the inactive-voters issue.
“SSF (Smart & Safe Florida) alleged in its complaint and argued on appeal that the secretary’s written directives were non-binding and without legal effect,” the opinion said. “As we have explained, the secretary had statutory authority to issue directions to the supervisors. Beyond that, SSF identified no right to be adjudicated regarding the secretary’s e-mail directions. Instead, SSF sought an advisory opinion from the court in the guise of a request for a declaratory judgment.”
