Florida Supreme Court Approves Warning Message for Pro-Abortion Ballot Initiative

The Florida Supreme Court building in Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 22, 2023. Nanette Holt/the Epoch Times

Florida’s top court on Aug. 21 approved a warning that will accompany a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion before fetal viability or when the procedure is deemed necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s health.

Voters in November, when deciding on the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion, will be told that the proposal, if approved, “would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida.”

The warning also states that “there is also uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds” and that “litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget.”

The warning is part of a financial impact statement that was revised in July after the Florida Supreme Court earlier in the year said the state’s 15-week abortion ban from 2022 is legal, paving the way for the state’s six-week ban—passed in 2023—to take effect a month later.

The warning will accompany the proposed amendment, which says that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Backers of the ballot initiative said that both the original and updated financial impact statements, which were authored by a conference that includes state officials and staff members from the state legislature, did not accurately describe the proposed amendment and that the court should order the conference to draft a new statement.

The updated statement “on its face violates this court’s precedent, in part by its inclusion of speculation about the effect of future litigation,” the initiative’s sponsor, Floridians Protecting Freedom, and Sara Latshaw, its author, told the Florida Supreme Court in a petition.

Justices said in a 6–1 ruling that they rejected the petition because Floridians Protecting Freedom took part in the conference process that culminated with the statements “without questioning or objecting to the conference’s authority to issue a revised financial impact statement on its own initiative.”

“For that basic reason,” Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wrote, “the petitioners waived or forfeited any reasonable claim to extraordinary relief from this court.”

He was joined by Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Renatha Francis, Jamie Grosshans, and Meredith Sasso.

Francis said in a concurring opinion that the court might reconsider accepting similar petitions in the future.

Justice Jorge Labarga said in a dissent that the court neglected to rule on questions about whether Republican legislators had the authority to reconvene the conference and whether the conference could issue the updated statement.

“The majority’s reasoning exposes the quandary the petitioners were placed in once the estimating conference was directed to—and did—reconvene. As the sponsor of the amendment, Floridians Protecting Freedom was entitled to contribute to the process of reconsidering and revising the financial impact statement,” he wrote.

“Had the petitioners not engaged in the process, they would have lost their opportunity to participate and to potentially influence the finished product. Because they did participate, they are now penalized, and their arguments are deemed waived or forfeited.”

In a statement to news outlets, Lauren Brenzel, director of Floridians Protecting Freedom, called the statement deceptive and aimed at confusing voters.

“Despite today’s decision, a ‘yes’ on Amendment 4 still means getting politicians out of our exam rooms so that women are free to make their own health care decisions with their doctors,” Brenzel said.

The Florida lawmakers who reconvened the committee have not yet responded to the ruling.