Gabrielle Russon
One Fort Myers TV station acquiesced and stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after a Department of Health (DOH) lawyer threatened Florida TV stations with criminal prosecution.
It’s a revelation in a new First Amendment lawsuit as the political committee supporting the Amendment 4 abortion rights initiative sued a pair of state officials Wednesday in federal court.
Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) is currently negotiating with CBS affiliate WINK-TV to get the ads back on air, but representatives for the PC say it has lost valuable time to reach voters in that market with the election just three weeks away.
FPF is suing Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who is also the head of DOH, and John Wilson, the Department’s former General Counsel who wrote the letters, in the U.S. District Court’s Tallahassee Division.
“The State’s threatened sanctions against third-party media organizations that host the advertisement — in a heavy-handed effort to silence FPF’s speech — is a classic and deeply disturbing example of unconstitutional coercion,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants’ threat is an escalation of a broader State campaign to attack Amendment 4 using public resources and government authority to advance the State’s preferred characterization of its anti-abortion laws as the ‘truth’ and denigrate opposing viewpoints as ‘lies.’”
The lawsuit is asking the federal courts for an injunction to stop the state from threatening or intimidating more TV stations over the ads, aimed at supporting a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights in Florida’s Constitution and overturn the state’s current six-week abortion ban. FPF is also asking for compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys fees.
“CBS affiliate WINK News, a leading local news station in Southwest Florida, has stopped airing a false advertisement created by a dark money group to push Amendment 4,” the Vote No On 4 Florida opposition group said in a Wednesday afternoon statement. “The ad was removed for making a patently inaccurate and harmful claim about Florida law: That it prohibits abortion even when the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s life.”
The ad at the heart of the controversy is about a Tampa woman who found out she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child. Before Florida’s current abortion law, she was able to get an abortion to get chemotherapy that extended her life for her family.
“Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine. Amendment 4 is going to protect women like me. We have to vote ‘yes,’” the woman identified as Caroline says in the ad.
But in his cease and desist letters to Florida TV stations, Wilson argued, “The advertisement is not only false; it is dangerous. Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death or substantial and irreversible physical impairment may and should seek medical treatment in Florida.”
Wilson wrote that TV stations playing the ad were violating sanitary nuisance laws that were punishable as a second-degree misdemeanor.
FPF’s lawsuit countered that examples of health sanitary nuisances are things like garbage and dead animals — not “political advertising that contradicts state officials’ political beliefs.”
Wilson’s Oct. 3 letters caused the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair to issue a reprimand.
“The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”
Wilson left DOH a short time later, according to the Miami Herald, which reported the reason for his departure was unclear.
FPF also stood by the Caroline ad and called it an accurate depiction of the state’s abortion law.
“Suffice to say, FPF disagrees with the State of Florida’s narrative about its current law, which bans most abortions after six weeks’ gestation,” the lawsuit said. “FPF sponsored Amendment 4 precisely because current Florida law does not protect women and instead runs roughshod over their rights and imperils their health by substituting the government’s judgments for those of women and their healthcare providers.”
FPF plans to keep running more ads, the lawsuit added.
19 comments
rbruce
October 16, 2024 at 9:35 am
The Ad is incorrect and misleading. If they want to run the Ad, then a caption should be printed in readable print saying what is claimed is wrong.
Cheesy Floridian
October 16, 2024 at 10:00 am
No the ad is corect.
Dean
October 23, 2024 at 6:13 pm
No it’s not. There are provisions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Lying to get an amendment passed is not freedom of speech. Disgusting liberals constantly rely on propaganda to get their agenda shoved down our throats. Enough.
Nick
October 16, 2024 at 11:40 am
This is quite literally, provably, demonstrably untrue.
You, Mr. Bruce, are talking out of your back-end.
I’m sorry that you don’t like it when Democracy does things that you don’t like, but backing this hilarious over-reach of government power over it is about as patriotic as goose-stepping.
Pathetic.
Dr. Franklin Waters
October 17, 2024 at 10:11 am
The ad is true, and DeSantis thinks he’s a dictator trying to suppress free speech he disagrees with. And you’re an UnAmerican Useful Idiot to his cause for going along with it.
Randy R
October 27, 2024 at 11:11 pm
I agree except that Castro wanna be IS a dictator.
louis foss
October 22, 2024 at 12:55 am
No it doesnt and tell me you have never seen ads that push issues that arent exactly true to the exact degree. Trump has a severely edited ad out right now.
Ban speech
October 16, 2024 at 9:52 am
This is fascism. Expect more if you vote for Trump.
Cheesy Floridian
October 16, 2024 at 10:01 am
Choice = freedom. Freedom = choice. Vote yes on 4! We don’t need DeSantis telling us what to do with our bodies. And we need protection so they don’t pass even harsher laws against women.
Michael
October 16, 2024 at 10:19 am
I would just love to see the DOH file an actual complaint in the court system. But they won’t…..they already know they lack a substantive cause of action. For all you that back DeSantis and the State on this consider this…..if contending that a political ad/speech is ‘misleading’ is the basis for legal action, 90% of what Republicans have said this election cycle is likewise actionable.
DaJuan Hayes
October 16, 2024 at 12:04 pm
And they call it the Free State of Florida. Yeah, right. There’s Rhonda Santis, cracking down on free speech.
Chuck Anziulewicz
October 16, 2024 at 12:07 pm
Trump was able to get three Federalist Society picks onto the Supreme Court. During their hearings they swore up and down about how Roe v. Wade as “precedent” and “settled law,” blah blah blah. THEN, as soon as they had the opportunity, they overturned it. And now even women who would personally never choose to have an abortion are a bit ticked off, because they see women in red states losing a BIG measure of their self-determination in ways that men have no frame of reference for. After all, there have never been any laws passed that affect MEN’S reproductive choices.
Come November, Florida will become the latest in a long list of states where abortion care has been enshrined by a popular vote. Women aren’t going down without a fight.
Jw
October 16, 2024 at 2:21 pm
At what point did the nomenclature shift from “Pro-Choice” to “Pro-Abortion Rights”? This isn’t the terminology that’s been used broadly for decades. Why the change?
Cheesy Floridian
October 16, 2024 at 3:23 pm
Because the pro life movement wants ti make it seem like we are “pro killing babies” and that’s not true. To me pro choice means pro freedom. To have a choice is to have freedom. To have freedom is the ability to make your own choices. The government took away the choice and that’s not right. Vote yes on 4!
Randy R
October 27, 2024 at 11:14 pm
Since Trump and his puppets on the Supreme Court took the choice away..
facts.fldfs.com
October 16, 2024 at 7:00 pm
I’m sure this will all work out. $900,000 of my taxpayer dollars for a law firm from Colorado will defend the State of Florida from this litigation. (See First & Fourteenth, LLC contract around October 9th, available in FACTS). The ads will play on!
LexT
October 17, 2024 at 8:00 am
This is a very touchy subject. The First Amendment protects free speech. We also do not want blatant lies. People should actually understand what they are voting on. Lying about what an Amendment does and does not do should not be done. Advertisers should self-police this. Media stations should also self-police facts. The problem is that both sides cannot agree upon the facts. It feels like Democrats and the Media are really comfortable lying. Especially lying about their opposition. Media taking sides makes this worse. This is a real problem, but I’m not sure that censorship is the solution. Especially when the court system does not have time to correct this type of situation.
louis foss
October 22, 2024 at 12:58 am
Tell me you have never seen a poltical ad in your lifetime that was very selective. Why all the threats now. Trump has.deceptive ad out right now. So many do. Stop being a MAGAt
Ocean Joe
October 20, 2024 at 4:37 pm
Ohio voters shocked the white male Republican party there, and so will Florida voters with help from a boatload of Republican women.
Desantis can add the change to Florida’s constitution to protect choice to his resume next time he wanders around Iowa spouting his talking points.
Unlike Ladapo, looks like chief counsel got weary of pushing the governor’s distortions.
Comments are closed.