With Floridians already voting by mail in the runup to the Nov. 5 election, fierce legal wrangling continues to escalate over a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.
A federal judge on Thursday sided with supporters of the proposal, which will appear as Amendment 4 on the ballot, who filed a lawsuit alleging the state violated the First Amendment by threatening television stations over an ad supporting the measure.
The lawsuit filed by Floridians Protecting Freedom sought a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to block Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “from taking any further actions to coerce, threaten, or intimate repercussions directly or indirectly to television stations, broadcasters, or other parties for airing” the ads.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Friday set an Oct. 29 hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction.
The judge on Thursday granted the restraining order, which also prohibits state officials from “undertaking enforcement action against” the Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee for running the ads “or engaging in any other speech protected under the First Amendment.” The temporary restraining order expires at 5 p.m. on the day of the hearing.
The lawsuit came amid an intense political battle about Amendment 4, which DeSantis and his administration are fiercely fighting. Floridians Protecting Freedom began pursuing the ballot initiative last year after DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a law largely preventing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Florida Department of Health earlier this month sent letters to TV stations calling for them to stop running a Floridians Protecting Freedom ad. The department alleged that the ad included false and “dangerous” information and threatened to seek injunctions or possible criminal prosecution against the stations.
But Walker’s order Thursday said the ad “is political speech — speech at the core of the First Amendment.”
The judge pointed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that he said “reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors.”
The DeSantis administration “cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech by simply declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false,’” Walker wrote.
“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,” he added. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
The controversial ad tells the story of a woman who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer when she was 18 weeks pregnant. Doctors told the woman they could not treat her with chemotherapy or radiation while pregnant, so she had an abortion. The ad asserts that current Florida law, which restricts abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, would prevent abortions in such cases.
The Department of Health letter disputed the assertion, saying that the six-week law includes exceptions to allow abortions to save pregnant women’s lives or to “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” In threatening action against TV stations, the letter cited a law aimed at targeting a “sanitary nuisance,” drawing a harsh rebuke from Walker in Thursday’s ruling.
“It is no answer to suggest that the Department of Health is merely flexing its traditional police powers to protect health and safety by prosecuting ‘false advertising’ — if the state can re-brand rank viewpoint discriminatory suppression of political speech as a ‘sanitary nuisance,’ then any political viewpoint with which the State disagrees is fair game for censorship,” the judge wrote.
Walker noted that the state “has actively undertaken its own anti-Amendment 4 campaign to educate the public about its view of Florida’s abortion laws and to correct the record, as it sees fit, concerning pro-Amendment 4 speech.”
The woman in the ad, identified only as “Caroline” due to concerns for her personal safety, joined other supporters of the proposal during a virtual press conference Friday.
“For me, abortion care was medically necessary to save my life,” she told reporters.
The woman said she was surprised when the ad became the focus of litigation.
“It stung a bit, because I was receiving so much compassion and support initially” until the letters were sent to the stations, she said.
“I was also packing up my house to evacuate for Milton, so I didn’t really have time to think about it,” she added, referring to Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Sarasota County on Oct. 9 and caused widespread damage along the Gulf Coast and across Central Florida.
The DeSantis administration has targeted the proposal in other ways, such as paying for public-service announcements urging a “no” vote on the measure and setting up a webpage warning against it.
In addition, the Florida Department of State’s Office of Election Crimes and Security released a 388-page report last week accusing some of the workers who collected signatures for the ballot initiative of fraud. The report also accused Floridians Protecting Freedom of illegally paying workers based on the number of signatures they collected.
Opponents of the abortion measure filed lawsuits Tuesday seeking to invalidate the proposed amendment, relying heavily on the state’s report.
“The presence of fraud and intentional wrongdoing, the failure to substantially comply with the signature verification laws, and the significant irregularities in the petition gathering and submission process in support of Amendment 4 adversely affects the sanctity of the ballot and the integrity of the election,” the lawsuit, filed in the 9th Judicial Circuit, said. “Fraud and intentional wrongdoing permeated the entire petition collection and verification process to the extent the validity of Amendment 4’s placement on the ballot is tainted.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuits, filed in numerous jurisdictions throughout the state, are being represented by attorney Alan Lawson, a former Florida Supreme Court justice.
Floridians Protecting Freedom Campaign Director Lauren Brenzel called the litigation “a deeply troubling anti-democratic effort” to keep voters from weighing in on abortion rights.
“This campaign has been run above board and followed state law at every turn. What we are seeing now is nothing more than dishonest distractions and desperate attempts to silence voters,” Brenzel said in a statement.
–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida
Deport republicans says
Funny the vile evil people act like they have some values, there only value is keeping a convict out of prison.
Deport the gop says
GOP managed to overturn decades of precedent in the middle of the night with no votes thanks to their stealing and stacking of the Supreme Court. Power at all costs right? you need to back a convict terrorist for leader? Let’s deport republicans!!
Deport the cons says
Have no fear the republicans will run Sabatoge against this judge. Probably threaten their family make up stories about them. Defame them on television. It’s the republicon way. Sleazy and no class.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
DUHsatan and his GOP puppets are running scared pulling these stunts. Best thing the people of Florida can do is get out and Vote! YES ON 4, YES ON 3, NO on the other four Amendments DUH is pushing.
Tom Hutson says
Baby Mussolini and his minions in the Florida State houses and the Florida Supreme Court need to get a life!!
The voters of Florida are going to vote yes on Amendment 4 ; there is nothing you can do other than try to bully the voters.
Stop wasting our taxpayer dollars on a lost cause; just admit your defeat! Start looking for a job, you’re going need one in two years.
Wallingford says
Our egotistical leader thinks he’s the dictator of a third world country. Bans books, bans women’s productive rights; bans history being taught in schools.
He’ll be in harmony with the Republican Candidate who wants to use the military against people who don’t agree with him.
R.S. says
If we were to believe that the unborn fetus is endowed with a soul as the seat of its awareness of self, I could understand the alarm at the wasting of human life with an abortion. However, it is closer to our awareness of reality to believe that the awareness of self results from the contiguity of memories–as David Hume suggested essentially–we would harm none who has not had the contiguity of memories to define a consciousness of self. Thus, some ethicists have suggested that even some post-birth abortions might be justifiable. In either case however, the already established sense of self on the part of the child-bearing person overrides the not fully formed sense of self of the unborn person. So, either way, it makes no sense to oppose the will of the mother to override the will of the unborn. An interesting analogy has been offered by a moral philosopher: Suppose someone famous had been hooked up to your kidney in a hospital. When you wake up, you are told that the individual wll be OK on his/her own after 9 months. Is there anyone who can compel you to stick it out for nine months? You are a hero if you do, but you’re not blameworthy if you don’t.
Pierre Tristam says
R.S., I believe neither in souls nor in government’s authority to have any say whatsoever in a person’s inalienable right to her body. So this is not a to question your conclusion, just Hume’s contiguities: if we were to accept his reasoning about memory—which has great appeal and seems logical—how then would that not apply to people with dementia, Alzheimer’s etc.? How would that not open the door to aborting—euthanizing—those lives at the other end of this odyssey of ours? Not that there isn’t a fair argument there too: to lose one’s memory is worse than death, so warehousing those with dementia, prolonging their lives (as we did with my mother far too long) is itself a form of torture posing as ethics or mercy, when it could well be the reverse. (If there is a god, we may well be punished for having done so, if we don’t justifiably clobber him first). But that aside: is memory or its absence really a legitimate way to define personhood?
Laurel says
For starters, regarding post birth abortions, that’s impossible. It is a whole new category: infanticide, and I can think that infanticide is a reasonable definition when the baby is completely formed and can survive outside the body with a normal mother-child relationship. What I mean by that is, by nature. However, if the infant cannot survive because of deformity, such as encephalitis, that is, to me, a separate debate. As nature would have it, the mother’s life is the most important as she is able to reproduce again. The pro-life people don’t really have too much to say about that as abortion is about controlling women, not about baby welfare.
The argument about souls is interesting. For souls, yeah, there is an energy, but does it continue on? Do we remember past lives? Many believe that. Sometimes I think we simply wake up on another planet! I don’t know whether that question will ever be answered to the living. However, if we continue on, the argument about abortion appears to be moot. It’s just another step in our growth.
As for memory, when does memory start? Beginning cells, simply dividing, do not have cognizant memory. My first memories come from age two. For someone else, it could be earlier, or could be later. Was I conscience earlier? Of course I was, but forming sustainable memories sounds to me to be a weak argument.
There is cognizant, mind memory and non-cognizant cell memory. As I type this, I am paying very little attention to my fingers. My body cells, and the biological entities that help my body along, do they have separate memories since they have specific jobs? I don’t believe so. An octopus has eight arms, and eight brains, that act independently, yet manage to function together. Does each brain and arm have separate memories? If we were to remove an arm, the octopus would continue to survive with its cognizant memories.
As for Alzheimer’s, I sympathize for your grandmother and your family. It’s a horrible disease. We have a friend who is going through it right now. Hubby and I were *lucky* as none of our family members suffered the disease, and my grandmother lived to be 99. We, as a society, think it’s humane to euthanize our beloved pets to prevent their suffering, though we are willing to care for them, but we are horrified by the thought of euthanizing a human. Hubby’s mom said Kevorkian was not crazy. I tend to agree, but the argument there is, when do we intervene, when the individual has lost cognizant brain function? It’s been an ongoing question for me that I intervened properly at a pet’s euthanasia, even though I have been told many times “You did the right thing.”
From my point of view, and I’m glad I’m past that age, an abortion for me would not happen, but, again, that’s me. I have no right to decide about another woman. Government has no right, either. I am not a doctor, and have no business in a decision between a woman, her husband, her family and her doctor. Her medical records and health history are none of my business. Noneja! So I cannot answer whether this particular topic is right or wrong, but it is not one for the government, as it is clearly about controlling women. Nothing more.
Laurel says
Sorry, it just occurred to me, an octopus has nine brains.
R.S. says
Thank you for pointing out a very important cautions to the notion that post-birth abortion in some cases may be defensible. Obviously, NAZI physicians went all overboard with that idea and classified “worthless lives” on the basis of how the individual appears to the observer from outside the individual. Alzheimer’s victims, dementia, or any other “vegetative lives” cannot be so easily classified as being outside of the stream of awareness, memories, or sensations. As you may well know, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has shown definitively that some folks who seem vegetative are not at all without an inner life. We don’t know to what degree Alzheimer’s or other dementia victims have lost the sense of self. So where a sense of self once has been the case, caution would forbid termination for fear of robbing someone of a possible future of value. That caution may not be necessary in the case of, e.g., anencephaly [anencaphalic monsters]. And, yes, I know that, because many if not most people will judge by appearances [it looks like a human, so it IS human], the stance might be controversial indeed. Of course, we also don’t know to what degree, animals are endowed with a sense of self; but are we ready to give up steak for fear of robbing someone of a future of value???
Laurel says
There is no such thing as “post-birth abortion.”
There are many people who would gladly miss that steak.
Earth is a tough place.
Tired of it says
“post birth abortions”. Really? More of the right wing clap trap. That is murder and only the Republicans are calling it that. The bottom line is who makes healthcare decisions, the woman or a bunch of spineless cult followes.
Deborah Coffey says
It’s just easier to define life when a first breath of air is taken. Nothing alive on this planet can exist without air. I just don’t think “memory” or “soul” are the heart of the matter.
R.S. says
Sea life ain’t life? Or would you include oxygenation through a draft of water through the gills? And when you check with your butcher, would you not also consider a deminished right to life with a diminished consciousness? [Just wondering, but perhaps you’re vegan?]
FlaPharmTech says
Yes! Good news.
Atwp says
Who in their right mind would vote for the Republicans. They are taking all of our freedoms. If Desantis run for President in 2028, my vote is off limits to him.
Joseph Barand says
Both Trump and DeSantis are married to women who have had multiple Abortions, time to stop the lies to garner the votes of the Evangelists and Catholic votes both who support, condone and encourage pedifiles in their religious ceremony and preaching.
Janet Fonseca says
“[I]t is her body, her life, and men, to that extent, are not similarly situated. [Men] don’t bear the child. […] It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”
–Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her
Senate confirmation hearing, July 21, 1993.
Tired of it says
Republicans firmly believe that freedom of speech applies only to them.
Bob says
We wont have a country with the current administration and path, but we will be able to kill unborns, that the most important thing to democrats
Laurel says
Bob: I’m not a Democrat, but I don’t believe abortions are the most important thing to them. But, keeping government out of our bedrooms used to be very important to Republicans. Remember, or were you never a Republican?
Skibum says
One fact that I think needs to be restated in this conversation is that DeSantis and his unethical minions that he put in charge at the State Dept. of “Health” … LOL, used our tax dollars to create an official, state sponsored TV ad against Amendment 4. In my mind, that was the first wrongdoing. Then, when other organizations spent their own money and private donations on the counter ad in question, the DeSantis administration threw even more of our tax dollars toward eliminating the constitutional 1st Amendment right of free speech by making overt threats to TV stations if they dared to air the counter advertisement on TV. That was the state’s second wrongdoing, and it is very telling about how unethical our horrible governor and those he inserted into power in this state actually are. Just think about that for a minute… they spend YOUR tax money on one particular partisan viewpoint, and then spend more of YOUR tax money to block any objection or counter viewpoint. That is not democracy. That is exactly the same kind of action that Putin would take in Russia, that people would see in N. Korea, or Venezuela, or anywhere that there is a corrupt leader and a corrupt government. Yeah, that sounds EXACTLY like Florida, doesn’t it?!
Local double taxpayer says
If all you people hate Republicans so much, why did you move to a red state?!
No need in getting upset over the topics though. There will be enough non-citizen voters from around the world to help you all out. I’d say we deport illegal immigrants first. That is according to law. Then we start with non-native Floridians after that.
Pierre Tristam says
A comment eminently deportable to Palm Coast’s Waste Water Treatment 1 (the one under a consent order, but not so crapped up that it won’t accept shit like this.)
Laurel says
As a native Floridian (hubby too), I find Local double taxpayer’s comment embarrassing.
I think he should also, maybe find a new tax advisor.
Skibum says
In answer to your question, maybe I moved to a “red” state to help cure the political sickness here. Maybe just to be a thorn in the side of all the uneducated trumpers. Maybe it was so I could find and read more of DeSantis’ banned books, or to just stand in public and scream “CLIMATE CHANGE”! Or maybe it was because this state needed more people who know how to dress nice and look absolutely FABULOUS!
Laurel says
Skibum: I don’t know whether to laugh or slap you!
Having been born here, we have always dressed cool.
Actually, Florida has not always been a red state. North Florida has always been rather poor, and full of rednecks. Nothing new there. There were few jobs, unless you had an employed relative. Again, I’m not sure why these people continuously vote against their own interests, but they do. So this area has mostly been red, but again, not all.
South Florida has mostly been blue all my life. The exception was the Miami Cubans, who were Republican, and still are. But now we’re talking Grand Ole Party, not the current Trumpican Party. Maybe they stick with the party simply out of loyalty. I’m thinking the older generation Cuban Americans are seeing the light, that is a familiar dangerous light they once saw in Cuba, and will swing blue. Other than that, the urban Broward and Dade Counties have been blue.
With people today, ignoring the facts about the economy and believing the lies of the conman Trump, who knows? Now it’s the Republicans who are shooting themselves in EACH foot, their calves, thighs, hips, chests, neck and heads. It’s absolutely unbelievable!
Skibum says
LOL… no disrespect intended, Laurel to you or anyone in particular. Well, maybe one particular Floridian who has a penchant for wearing his tie hanging down to his crotch!
Laurel says
Skibum: He’s a NYer.
R.S. says
Or, as Republicans appear also to have tried, simply change the party affiliation of senior citizens to Republican. It’s been tried, hasn’t it? https://www.local10.com/news/politics/2022/02/04/more-registered-voters-report-unauthorized-party-affiliation-changes/
Sherry says
@double. . . your “holier than thou” attitude is “deplorable”. My hubby and I were born and raised in Florida. . . back in the days of “Southern Hospitality”. It is our home state that moved away from that kind and gentile culture into one filled with brainwashed, fear and hate filled trump/Fox cult members like you. Some excellent counseling on how to be a reasonable human being would be of great benefit to you. I urge you to seek that counseling immediately, in order to save your rotting soul.
Don't Cull Me says
Entire family born and raised here in Florida and we are all horribly disappointed with Florida government officials especially DeSantis. Used to be a great state- no longer!!
Very distrubing how the GOP says moving the abortion issue to the states is better representing the citizen’s views in each state. But yet when said citizens try to express their opinion about abortion via ballot / state constitutional changes, the sitting GOP legislators in these states do everything possible to suppress the state citizens actions to make changes. Very Hitler like!!!