| Leon County Circuit Court Rules Amendment 3 Ballot Language Defective and Must Be Rewritten in 10 Days |
| In an August 3 ruling on the three consolidated suits challenging the legal sufficiency of Amendment 3’s ballot title and summary language, Leon County Circuit Court Judge David Frank issued an 18-page order ruling Amendment 3’s ballot title and summary are legally defective and cannot be placed on the ballot in their current form. The court concluded the proposed ballot language fails to fairly and accurately inform voters about the amendment and instead contains political advocacy, misleading descriptions, and omissions of important information. The order specifically identifies problems with the title and several summary descriptions, including references to taxpayer benefits, funding for core services, protection of small businesses, and the five-year residency requirement associated with the increased homestead exemption. The court found portions of the language to be inaccurate, misleading, or political in nature rather than a neutral description of the amendment. The court also addressed the amendment’s potential change to the existing constitutional framework, which provides local government authority over the levy and use of property tax revenues. Addressing the ballot summary’s claim of “full elimination” of property taxes, the court said, “the ballot summary goes beyond the proposed amended constitutional text by telling voters that the amendment will ultimately lead to the full elimination of non-school property taxes on homestead property (‘requires, through general law, a schedule for full elimination’). But the actual proposed constitutional language does not require ‘full elimination’.” Addressing the ballot summary’s claim of “Ensuring fairness for Florida residents,” the court called it inaccurate because, “in fact the proposed amendment would discriminate against Florida residents who rent their homes (single family or multi-family) by providing tax relief only to owners of homestead properties, thereby increasing the burdens on renters who will likely pay more when their landlords pass on the increased property taxes resulting from higher millage rates.” The court further explained the claim of fairness was unfounded given that “the amendment discriminates against Florida residents who establish (or re-establish) residency after December 31, 2026, by forcing them to wait five years before obtaining the higher $250,000 homestead exemption.” Addressing the ballot summary’s claim that the amendment would ensure funding for core services, the court explained: “[t]he summary states that the amendment is ‘Ensuring funding for core services’ because it ‘requires local governments to use remaining property taxes solely for core public needs.’ Yet the proposed amendment does not ‘ensure’ funding for police, fire protection, schools, infrastructure, or any other ‘core’ public service, nor does it create any new restrictions on how property tax revenues may be expended. In fact, by substantially reducing the local property tax base, the proposed amendment is likely to decrease the revenues available to local governments to fund core services. The amendment cannot fairly or accurately be described as ‘ensuring funding.’” As evidence of the actual effect of the amendment versus the ballot summary’s misleading description, Judge Frank referenced the measure’s own legislative analysis containing the Revenue Estimating Conference’s projected total loss of some $11.86 billion in local government property tax revenues over time if the amendment were adopted. Among the ballot’s material omissions of fact, the court explained how, “[u]nder the current Constitution, cities and counties enjoy broad home rule power to determine how to spend ad valorem tax dollars, see Art. VIII, §§ 1(a), 1(f)-(g), 2(b), Fla. Const.; see also Ch. 166, Fla. Stat. (codifying home rule powers for cities); § 125.01, Fla. Stat. (same for counties), and they “shall” be able to levy property taxes “for their respective purposes,” see Art. VII, § 9(a), Fla. Const. The amendment purports to change the constitutional baseline of city and county power by placing in the Constitution for the first time the Legislature’s right to control ad valorem tax spending. But a proposal must identify ‘major change[s] in the function of government.’ . . And it must ‘identify[] the articles or sections of the constitution substantially affected.’… The present statement does neither.” While the ruling is significant, it does not remove Amendment 3 from the ballot. The statute governing legislatively proposed constitutional amendments permits the State to appeal the court’s order, or the Attorney General may immediately revise the ballot title and summary in accordance with the court’s order. However, the court’s order simply directs the Attorney General to prepare revised ballot language that corrects the identified deficiencies within 10 days and directs the Secretary of State to deliver the revised ballot language to Florida’s supervisors of elections across the state. The League will continue to monitor and report on further developments in the cases challenging Amendment 3. |
— Reported by Florida League of Cities, a Florida advocacy group.–
