Federal judge blows up Florida’s law limiting contributions for ballot initiatives

A federal judge has rejected an attempt by Florida lawmakers to limit contributions to political committees supporting ballot initiatives, saying it violates the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor issued an 18-page ruling Wednesday that included a permanent injunction against the $3,000 contribution limit, which passed in 2021 and was revised this year. The limit was part of long-running efforts by Republican leaders to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives to amend the state Constitution.

Winsor also disputed arguments by attorneys for the Florida Elections Commission, the defendant, that the contribution limit would help curb fraud in the crucial process of collecting petition signatures to put initiatives on the ballot.

“Here, there is no decent fit between the restriction and the asserted anti-fraud purpose,” wrote Winsor, who was appointed to the federal bench by former Republican President Donald Trump. “For one, the FEC shows no clear connection between large individual contributions and fraud. In the FEC’s view, the fraud illustrates how Florida’s ballot initiative process is susceptible to the influence of large donors who fund petition gatherers, who in turn have incentives to falsify petition signatures. But the FEC offers no reason to think that large individual contributions — as opposed to large aggregate contributions — are to blame for this dynamic.”

The 2021 law placed a $3,000 limit on contributions from in-state and outof-state donors to political committees gathering petition signatures. Winsor last year issued a preliminary injunction to block the law, saying it violated First Amendment rights to political expression.

The Legislature this year revised the law to apply the $3,000 limit only to out-ofstate donors. The state’s attorneys argued that the change made the lawsuit moot.

Winsor acknowledged in Wednesday’s ruling that the revision was a “complicating factor.” Nevertheless, he ruled the limit unconstitutional.

The judge added, “In short, the parties have not shown that the new law will change anything, so it provides no basis to deny the requested relief. This order will enjoin the FEC from enforcing the contribution limit against plaintiffs as to donations to political committees that sponsor a ballot initiative.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and political committees filed the lawsuit, arguing that the contribution limit unconstitutionally restricted speech and was designed to prevent citizens’ initiatives from reaching the ballot.