Attorney General James Uthmeier and Secretary of State Cord Byrd this week asked a federal appeals court to allow the state to at least temporarily enforce a law that would prevent non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens from collecting ballot-initiative petitions while a legal fight plays out.
Lawyers for Uthmeier and Byrd want the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a stay of a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued July 8 to halt the restrictions on non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens. Walker ruled that the restrictions likely violated the First Amendment.
Uthmeier and Byrd appealed the preliminary injunction and filed a motion for a stay. If granted, a stay would allow the state to enforce the restrictions while the underlying appeal proceeds.
The motion, filed Monday, disputed that the restrictions violate the First Amendment, including saying they “affect conduct, not speech.”
“Neither Californians nor Colombians have a First Amendment right to collect completed citizen-initiative petitions from Floridians who wish to change the Florida Constitution,” the motion said. “The district court erred in saying that they do.”
Also, the motion said the restrictions were designed to help prevent fraud in the ballot-initiative process and pointed to out-of-state contractors and subcontractors who are paid to collect petition signatures.
“Law enforcement must thus work through a nesting doll-like setup to investigate, arrest and obtain a conviction for petition fraud,” the motion said.
In his ruling, Walker said the restrictions went too far, though he acknowledged the state “has great leeway in regulating the ballot initiative process.”
“But here, the state has categorically barred entire classes of people from participating in the core political speech that is central to this process. Moreover, the state has failed to demonstrate that this severe burden on speech is narrowly tailored to furthering its compelling interest in investigating and combating fraud in the petition initiative process,” he wrote.
Florida Decides Healthcare, a political committee sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expanding Medicaid coverage, filed the lawsuit in May after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the law, which made a series of changes to the ballot-initiative process.
Smart & Safe Florida, a committee behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational marijuana, and FloridaRighttoCleanWater.org, a committee proposing an amendment about access to clean water, and other groups also joined the case.
While Walker blocked the restrictions on non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens, he allowed other parts of the new law to remain in effect.
State Republican leaders and groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce have long sought to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives, in part arguing that policy issues should be decided by the Legislature rather than through amending the Constitution. DeSantis last year led efforts to defeat proposed amendments on abortion rights and recreational marijuana.
Petition gatherers play a critical role in the process, with sponsors of ballot proposals sometimes spending millions of dollars on contractors to gather signatures. To reach the 2026 ballot, for example, supporters of initiatives must submit at least 880,062 valid signatures.
Under the new law, groups that “knowingly” violate the restrictions on non-U.S. citizens and non-Florida residents could face $50,000 fines and other sanctions. Petitions delivered by such people would have to be scrapped.
Walker wrote that the law would “force plaintiffs to choose between curtailing their First Amendment rights to engage in core political speech via petition circulation or risk invalidation of verified petitions, crippling civil penalties and further enforcement actions.”
But the motion for a stay said the “provisions at issue are tailored to the state’s compelling interests.”
“It’s undisputed that there’s citizen-initiative fraud in Florida,” the motion said. “And it should be undisputed that it’s harder for the state to track down bad-acting non-residents, by virtue of their being out-of-staters.”