Christine Jordan Sexton
A tug-of-war over the wording that will appear on the November ballot next to an amendment on abortion access is revving back up in the courts.
The group pushing Amendment 4 filed an expedited motion with the First District Court of Appeal asking it to temporarily relinquish its jurisdiction over an already existing challenge to the financial impact statement that is supposed to accompany the amendment.
If granted, the motion would allow Circuit Court Judge John C. Cooper to rule immediately on the legality of a newly revised Financial Impact Statement that was published earlier this week. In a 3-1 vote, a panel of state officials — including some brought in specifically for the initiative — signed off on the revised language.
The financial impact statement is meant to guide voters about the budgetary impacts of proposed initiatives, but the one accompanying the amendment guaranteeing access to abortion has created lawsuits and controversy.
Floridians Protecting Freedom sued because the first statement was drawn up late last year and still referred to a 15-week ban on abortion that is no longer in effect. The group won at the circuit court level but the state appealed.
Now the group backing the amendment argues that the latest statement has legal defects.
“Although this redrafted Statement removes the outdated and confusing language that plagued the original Statement, it does little to cure any of the other legal defects the circuit court identified,” attorneys for the group wrote in their emergency motion.
“Among its numerous problems, this redrafted Statement recalls the circuit court’s concerns that the Statement is by law ‘limited to summarizing Amendment 4’s probable impact to state and local government revenues and costs and to the state budget’; that it not be ‘inaccurate, ambiguous, misleading, unclear, and confusing’; that it not ‘highlight the potential of future litigation, which is speculative’; and that it must ‘clearly announce its purpose.'”
Vote No on 4 Florida spokesperson Taryn Fenske called the motion ironic in a statement issued late Wednesday night.
“The same group that sued Florida demanding a new financial impact statement is now complaining AGAIN simply because they don’t like that voters will now read the truth about Amendment 4 on the ballot — they didn’t have to draft a vague and definition-less Amendment 4 to mislead Floridians, but they did. In fact, the ACLU testified 4 times during the conference and refused to answer an important question —How many Florida laws their amendment would invalidate? They’re upset because their attempt to trick Florida voters has been exposed. The new FIS statement is clear and accurately reflects the potential consequences of Amendment 4, including the risk of endless legal battles, but more importantly, the potential for tax-payer-funded abortions up to the point of birth.The truth is, Amendment 4 would make abortion the ONLY procedure for minors not requiring parental consent to have an abortion, give any so-called “health care provider,” even abortion clinic employees who are not doctors – the ability to approve late-term abortions for undefined health concerns.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday spoke to the Florida GOP delegation in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. He called the amendment that enshrines abortion rights up to the point of viability as something that would eliminate all “pro-life protections” in Florida law. Florida recently put in place a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
“That is wrong, that is something that we have to defeat,” DeSantis said. “We have to win. And once people know what that is I think that we will be able to do it. But it’s going to take a lot of work.”
This week, Amendment 4 advocates decried what they saw as political tricks when the state panel revised a 150-word “financial impact statement” that will be printed under the ballot question.
