Florida Property Tax Amendment 3 Faces Court Test as Fall Campaign Begins

The constitutional amendment that would sharply reduce, and eventually eliminate, property taxes on Florida homesteads faces a courtroom test this week, with a hearing scheduled for July 29 in a lawsuit challenging the language voters will read on their November ballots. The measure, placed before voters after a special legislative session earlier this year, would raise the homestead exemption in stages and cap how quickly assessments can rise on other property. It requires 60 percent approval to take effect.

The stakes are unusually high for a single ballot question. Property taxes are the primary funding mechanism for Florida's counties, municipalities, school districts, and special taxing districts, which means the amendment touches nearly every local service Floridians use, from sheriff's patrols to school buses to stormwater systems. Supporters describe it as the largest tax cut in state history. Opponents describe it as a structural change to local finance whose costs have not been fully accounted for.

For homeowners, the practical question is simpler and more immediate: how much would a tax bill actually fall, and what would local governments do to make up the difference. The answer depends on assessed value, on the county, and on choices city and county commissions have not yet made.

What the amendment would do

The measure increases Florida's existing homestead exemption in two steps. The exemption, currently set at $50,000, would rise to $150,000 beginning January 1, 2027, and then to $250,000 by the beginning of 2028. Because the exemption is subtracted from a home's assessed value before tax rates are applied, a larger exemption means a smaller taxable base for every homesteaded property in the state.

The amendment also lowers the annual cap on assessment increases for property that does not carry a homestead exemption. That cap currently sits at 10 percent per year and would drop to 5 percent. This provision covers rental homes, vacation properties, second homes, and commercial real estate, none of which would receive the expanded exemption itself. For landlords and commercial owners, the slower assessment growth is the entire benefit of the measure.

A further provision would restrict how local governments may spend the property tax revenue that remains. The language directs that those dollars go toward core public functions, a category the amendment describes as including public safety, education and schools, infrastructure, and natural resources. How narrowly that restriction would be read is one of the open questions local finance officials have raised.

Notably, the amendment does not eliminate property taxes outright on its face. It sets the exemption schedule and leaves the path toward broader elimination to future legislation, a structural detail that has drawn commentary from both supporters and critics of the measure.

How it reached the ballot

Governor Ron DeSantis called a special session on property tax relief and unveiled a proposal branded "Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes," asking the Legislature to send a constitutional amendment to voters. The Republican supermajorities in both chambers took up the question, and the Legislature approved a version of the measure in early June, with the House voting 75 to 26 and the Senate voting 30 to 9.

The version lawmakers passed was not identical to what the governor had proposed. DeSantis said publicly in late June that he would not formally campaign for the amendment, on the grounds that the legislative product differed from his own plan. That is an unusual posture for a governor whose office originated the proposal, and it has left the measure without the statewide political operation that typically accompanies a marquee constitutional amendment.

The absence of a large, organized campaign on either side has been one of the defining features of the race so far. An opposition committee operating under the name Stop Unfair Tax Shifts had raised roughly $23,200 as of July 17, spending about $8,300, largely on political consulting. Those are small figures by the standards of Florida ballot campaigns, where seven-figure spending is routine.

The lawsuit over ballot language

The challenge scheduled for a hearing on July 29 concerns the summary language that will appear on the ballot rather than the substance of the amendment itself. Florida law requires that ballot summaries describe the chief purpose of a proposed amendment accurately and without misleading voters, and challenges on those grounds are a recurring feature of the state's ballot measure process.

Ballot language suits are consequential because of their timing. Under Florida's election calendar, ballots must be finalized and printed well ahead of the November 3 general election, and overseas and military ballots go out earlier still. A ruling that requires rewriting a summary, or that removes a measure from the ballot, has to come early enough for supervisors of elections in all 67 counties to act on it.

The suit was filed on June 11, according to court records reported at the time. A hearing does not necessarily produce an immediate final ruling, and decisions in ballot language cases are frequently appealed to Florida's appellate courts and, in significant cases, to the Florida Supreme Court. Floridians following the measure should expect the legal question to move faster than a typical civil case but not necessarily to resolve in a single hearing.

What it means for Florida homeowners

For a homesteaded property owner, the arithmetic of the exemption increase is straightforward. Raising the exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 removes an additional $200,000 of assessed value from taxation. In a jurisdiction with a combined millage rate in the neighborhood of 18 mills, which is within the range seen in many Florida counties once county, municipal, school, and special district levies are combined, that reduction would translate into savings in the low thousands of dollars annually for homes valued above the exemption threshold.

Homes assessed below the new exemption level would owe nothing in property taxes on the homesteaded portion of their value. The governor said when introducing the concept that the change would eliminate property taxes for a large share of Florida homeowners, a claim that has been examined by fact-checkers and depends heavily on which measure of home value is used and on how school district levies, which are governed by separate constitutional provisions, are treated.

Renters occupy a more ambiguous position. The amendment does not extend the expanded exemption to rental property, so landlords would not see the exemption benefit. They would benefit from the reduced assessment growth cap. Whether that translates into moderated rents depends on market conditions rather than on anything in the amendment text.

The local government question

County and municipal finance officers across Florida have spent much of the year modeling what the exemption increase would mean for their budgets. Property taxes generally represent the largest single locally controlled revenue source for Florida counties and cities, and the state constitution caps how much local governments can raise from other sources.

Local governments have a limited menu of responses. They can raise millage rates, which would shift more of the burden onto non-homesteaded property and onto homesteaded property whose value exceeds the exemption. They can reduce services. They can draw down reserves, which is a one-time measure rather than a structural fix. Or they can seek additional state assistance, which would require the Legislature to appropriate replacement revenue.

The name of the opposition committee, Stop Unfair Tax Shifts, points at the concern that has animated much of the criticism: that reducing the homesteaded tax base without reducing local spending obligations moves the burden onto commercial property, rental housing, and second homes rather than removing it from the system. That dynamic would fall unevenly across Florida, with tourism-dependent and second-home-heavy counties positioned differently from counties where most property is owner-occupied.

School funding adds a further layer. Florida's school districts levy a required local effort millage set in coordination with the state education funding formula, and changes to the local tax base interact with state equalization payments in ways that are not obvious from the amendment text alone.

Where the campaign stands

With just over three months until the November 3 election, neither side has assembled the kind of statewide advertising campaign that Florida voters have come to expect on high-profile amendments. The governor's decision not to campaign formally removed the most prominent potential advocate. The opposition's fundraising has remained modest.

That relative quiet raises the importance of the ballot summary itself. When voters encounter an amendment without having been reached by advertising from either side, the words printed on the ballot carry disproportionate weight in shaping the decision. That is precisely why the July 29 hearing matters beyond its procedural posture.

The 60 percent threshold is also a significant hurdle. Florida raised the approval requirement for constitutional amendments from a simple majority in 2006, and measures that poll well in the abstract have fallen short of 60 percent at the ballot box on multiple occasions since.

How Florida's existing exemptions work

The amendment builds on a homestead system that is already among the more complex in the country, and the interaction between the proposed change and existing provisions determines who benefits and by how much.

Florida's current homestead exemption is $50,000, but it does not apply uniformly. The first $25,000 applies to all taxing authorities including school districts. The second $25,000 applies to assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000 and does not apply to school levies. School district millage is a substantial share of a typical Florida tax bill, which means the effective exemption is smaller than the headline figure suggests.

Separately, the Save Our Homes assessment limitation caps annual increases in assessed value for homesteaded property at 3 percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. Long-term owners often carry assessed values far below market value as a result.

Portability allows homeowners to transfer accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to a new homestead within Florida, up to a statutory limit. This provision reduces the tax penalty for moving within the state.

The proposed amendment does not replace these provisions. It layers a larger exemption on top of them, which means the benefit to any individual household depends on its existing assessed value, its accumulated Save Our Homes differential, and its local millage composition.

What local budgets actually fund

The amendment's provision restricting remaining property tax revenue to core public needs raises the question of what those revenues currently support.

County budgets in Florida typically allocate the largest shares to public safety, encompassing sheriff's offices, jails, fire rescue, and emergency medical services. Those functions are personnel-intensive and grow with population.

School district budgets are funded through a combination of state appropriations and required local effort millage set through the state education funding formula, along with discretionary and capital outlay millage approved locally.

Beyond those categories sit functions that may or may not fall within the amendment's specified purposes: libraries, parks and recreation, cultural programming, code enforcement, planning departments, human services, and animal control. How narrowly the restriction is interpreted would determine their status.

Municipal budgets differ from county budgets in composition, with cities carrying responsibilities for police, streets, and utilities that vary considerably by municipality.

Florida would not be the first state to sharply limit property taxation by constitutional amendment. California's Proposition 13, adopted in 1978, produced substantial relief for homeowners while shifting a larger share of school and local government funding to the state level. The common pattern across such measures is that reducing local property tax capacity increases dependence on state revenue, which shifts fiscal decision-making from county commissions to the legislature. Whether Florida would follow that pattern depends on legislative choices that have not been made.

What's next

The July 29 hearing is the immediate milestone. Depending on the outcome, the case could move to an appellate court on an expedited schedule, given the printing deadlines facing county supervisors of elections.

Beyond the litigation, Floridians will begin receiving Truth in Millage notices from their county property appraisers in August, the annual mailing that estimates the coming year's tax bill based on proposed rates. Those notices reflect current law, not the amendment, but they arrive at a moment when property taxes are unusually prominent in the state's political conversation and may sharpen how voters think about the November question.

Local governments will also adopt their budgets for the coming fiscal year in September, before the election. Those budgets will be built on the current exemption, meaning any adjustment to the amendment's passage would come in subsequent budget cycles beginning in 2027, when the first exemption increase would take effect.