First lawsuit filed to stop city of Miami from cancelling November election

Former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, who has been campaigning for the mayor’s race for months, has filed a challenge to the city commission’s cancellation of the November election — the first of what could be several lawsuits.
City commissioners voted 3-2 last week to change the election date from odd to even years, effectively cancelling this year’s election for mayor and commissioners in districts 3 and 5 and extending everybody’s terms by a year. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had warned them a day earlier that they could not do that and that there would be consequences. But he has not filed any legal motion to stop the change.
Could he, like some other would-be candidates, be waiting the 10 day period before Mayor Francis Suarez‘s deadline to veto the measure? Because that’s not gonna happen. This is his idea, after all. Sure, the ordinance was sponsored by Commissioner Damian Pardo but that’s only because Baby X convinced him.
Read related: Miami commissioners should shorten their terms for election year change
Both Suarez and Pardo are named in the lawsuit, as are every other commissioner (even though Commissioners Joe Carollo and Miguel Gabela voted against it), City Clerk Todd Hannon and Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia.
“The City of Miami Commissioners unconstitutionally bypassed the democratic will of the people in a way that the Florida Constitution, the Miami-Dade Charter, and the City’s Charter expressly prohibit,” said Alan Lawson, former Florida Supreme Court Justice and lead counsel at Lawson, Huck, Gonzalez PLCC, which is representing Gonzalez. “This repugnant and deliberate act was done without a single electoral vote in defiance of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s clear warning that doing so was illegal. Miami voters are the only ones who can decide to change the election date thus extending the terms of elected officials, which is the immediate concern of our client,” Lawson said in a statement.
“We are stunned by the brazen actions of Miami’s elected officials,” Gonzalez said, though he should probably be the least surprised.
“Canceling a regularly scheduled election and extending their own terms in office is in direct defiance of Florida law. Doing so without the consent of voters is an outrageous abuse of power. Attorney General James Uthmeier has already warned that this violates the law, and Governor Ron DeSantis has strongly supported that position. Disenfranchising voters undermines our democracy and robs citizens of their voice at the ballot box,” he said.
“If they can steal an election, what else can they steal?”
In the complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, the attorneys for Gonzalez write that the commissioners did “three legally impermissible things” when they passed the ordinance on final reading Thursday.
“First, they cancelled the election scheduled for November 4, 2025, less than five (little  more than four) months away — the stuff of failed regimes around the world,” the complaint states. “Second, they fundamentally changed when the General Municipal Elections — i.e., the  elections for the city of Miami Mayor and its City Commissioners — occur, from being held in odd numbered years, as the City of Miami’s Charter unambiguously mandates, to even years concurrent with midterm and general elections.
“This point bears repeating: Without a referendum — i.e., without a single vote cast by  the people of the City of Miami — the Commissioners have overridden the City of Miami’s Charter (its constitution) to change how and when the City of Miami’s elections take place,” the lawyers wrote. “But it gets worse.
Read related: Miami Commissioners pass election date change — and steal an extra year
“The third, and perhaps most concerning, thing the Commissioners did …  is decide that they and the already-term-limited mayor get to stay in office longer than the voters elected them to be in office.
“The Commissioners unconstitutionally bypassed the democratic will of the people in a way that the Florida Constitution, the Miami-Dade Charter, and the City’s Charter expressly prohibit. Once more, they did so without a single electoral vote,” the lawsuit states.
“Reminiscent of regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, or Cuba — the very places so  many of Miami’s people come from—those in power, while in power, forced upon those voters what  they think is best for elections going forward—and secured for themselves additional time in power,  without a vote of the electorate.
“That cannot stand.”
Meanwhile, Gonzalez has not stopped campaigning.
Emilio Tomas Gonzalez v. City of Miami, Et Al by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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