Dara Kam, News Service of Florida

Siding with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, a Leon County circuit judge on Friday ruled that state officials did not err when ordering supervisors of elections to scrap more than 200,000 petition signatures supporting a proposed constitutional amendment to allow recreational marijuana.

Attorney General James Uthmeier is asking an administrative law judge to toss out a challenge to an emergency rule banning the sale and manufacture of a concentrated byproduct of kratom, known as 7-OH.

Disability-rights advocates are challenging a new state law allowing pregnant women to use parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities.

Attorneys for immigrants held at a remote facility in the Everglades pressed a federal judge on Monday to force state and federal officials to ensure adequate access to legal representation — including private meetings and confidential documents — and said the detainees face “grave harm” without the court’s intervention.

Hundreds of men who were abused as children at two notorious state reform schools are in line to receive checks of more than $21,000 in the coming days, as part of a $20 million reparations program approved last year by Florida lawmakers.

Records related to a state House probe of a nonprofit linked to First Lady Casey DeSantis’ signature Hope Florida assistance program are part of an “open” investigation, Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell’s office said.

Calling split appellate-court decisions “intolerable,” the National Rifle Association on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge to a Florida law that raised the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 18 to 21.

State budget talks won’t resume until after the Memorial Day holiday weekend, legislative leaders announced Thursday.

Attorneys for the state acknowledged Tuesday that a 2021 Florida law that placed restrictions on social-media platforms posed “First Amendment problems” but urged a federal judge to reject a legal challenge that wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court before being sent back to district court.

Though they will have to return to Tallahassee to hammer out a budget, Florida lawmakers Friday night finished most of the business of the 2025 legislative session.

Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who chairs the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, announced the decision after the Hope Florida Foundation’s lawyer, Jeff Aaron, and leaders of nonprofits that received $5 million grants from the foundation refused to appear before the panel.

Seeking to “restore confidence” in its mission, directors of an embattled foundation affiliated with First Lady Casey DeSantis’ signature Hope Florida welfare-assistance program on Thursday agreed to strengthen the nonprofit’s structure amid widening scrutiny by the Florida House.