TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — 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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