The Seminole Tribe will keep its monopoly on gambling in Florida as Florida Voters in Charge recently dropped its lawsuit in Leon County Circuit Court.
The group, backed by $73 million from the Las Vegas Sands Corp., ran a petition drive to place on the November ballot an initiative to allow casinos in North Florida. When the group came up short of the 900,000 required signatures by the February 1 deadline, it filed a lawsuit asking Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper to extend the deadline. In March, Cooper denied the request, resulting in the committee filing an appeal at the 1st District Court of Appeal.
Florida Voters in Charge filed a lawsuit in December accusing the Seminoles of “sabotaging” the petition drive. The group said the tribe illegally interfered with workers trying to gather signatures. The Seminoles responded that Florida Voters in Charge broke the law by paying petition gatherers per signature. The group dropped that lawsuit and filed the one asking for more time.
The latest suit also claimed local elections supervisors were sitting on piles of petitions and challenged signature-matching requirements, arguing “tens of thousands of signatures” were rejected without giving voters the chance to “cure” signature mismatches. The suit also alleged some Florida laws regarding the ballot-initiative process are unconstitutional.
In February the judge allowed the Seminoles, a tribe-funded political committee called Standing up for Florida Inc. (backed by $40 million from the Seminoles to keep the issue off the ballot) and the committee’s chairman, Pradeep “Rick” Asnani, to intervene in the lawsuit. In a March 22 motion for summary judgment, attorneys for Standing Up for Florida said the judge should reject the plaintiffs’ arguments. The judge had scheduled a hearing for April 7 which was cancelled due to Florida Voters in Charge dropping its lawsuit on April 1. The group previously dropped its appeal.
Committee spokeswoman Sarah Bascom said Florida Voters in Charge “has begun the process of winding down the committee and its efforts for the 2022 election cycle. While the committee believes that it submitted more than the required number of voter signatures to make the 2022 ballot, the various obstacles the committee would have to overcome in order to vindicate those voters and make the ballot−the most recent of which is the passage of a law calling into question the availability of Supreme Court review of the ballot language−makes achievement of that goal untenable.”
Las Vegas Sands Chief Executive Officer Rob Goldstein said, “In Florida, we failed recently. We had a disappointing outcome, but I think it’s in early innings. We will be in Florida, in my opinion. It’s just a question of when it happens.”
Another 2022 gambling amendment proposal, from the Florida Education Champions committee, folded in late January when it couldn’t get enough petition signatures. It proposed authorizing sports betting at professional sports venues, parimutuel facilities and statewide via online platforms. The initiative was funded by DraftKings and FanDuel.
