Florida Supreme Court: Voters too dumb to vote on recreational marijuana ballot initiative

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The summary’s unqualified use of the word “permits” strongly suggests that the conduct to be authorized by the amendment will be free of any criminal or civil penalty in Florida,” the majority held

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This reasoning is curious, because the summary explicitly states that it will legalize marijuana “under Florida law,” not federal law. And in 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held that a ballot summary about medical marijuana need not inform voters about an amendment’s impact on federal law, only state law. But on Thursday, without acknowledging it, the court quietly overruled this precedent. It declared that this summary “strongly suggests that the conduct to be authorized by the amendment will be free of any criminal or civil penalty in Florida.” Put differently, voters will think that, by amending their state constitution, they are somehow repealing or suspending the federal ban on marijuana. That, the court concluded, renders the initiative unlawful.

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Two justices—Jorge Labarga, a moderate, and Alan Lawson, a conservative—dissented. Lawson’s dissent is quite sharp: He condemned the majority opinion as “contrary to rational analysis,” a “non sequitur” that “violates basic principles of logic.” The court typically takes “a nonpaternalistic approach to our review, expecting voters to educate themselves regarding the details of a proposed amendment before voting.” It “presumes that voters possess a rudimentary knowledge of their government’s structure and of the laws governing their conduct.” That is especially true when citizens participate in the “core right of self-governance” by voting to amend their state constitution.

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