A Florida judge has said he will not block a state agency’s anti-amendment campaign regarding abortion protections ahead of the November election.
On Monday, Leon County Judge Jonathan Sjostrom, who serves on the state’s 2nd Judicial Circuit Court, rejected the Floridians Protecting Freedom coalitions' request for an injunction against the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
Earlier this month, the agency published a website and started an ad campaign against Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution. About a week after AHCA published the website, Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit stating that AHCA was spreading misleading and harmful information by use of “fearmongering.”
Sjostrom said in his court writings that Floridians Protecting Freedom failed to provide evidence that AHCA’s campaign was harming potential voters and that ultimately “the fact finder must be each voter who will choose the information the voter finds convincing and render judgment on each ballot.”
Floridians Protecting Freedom reacts
The group, Floridians Protecting Freedom, was responsible for receiving the 1 million necessary signatures to petition Amendment 4 onto the November ballot. Members of the group called Judge Sjostrom’s decision “shocking.”
“We were surprised because what we're seeing on these websites, and just through the information that's been disseminated, are flat-out falsehoods, and they are (the state’s) personal preferences regarding abortion,” said Keisha Mulfort a senior communication strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Floridians Protection Freedom.
“Even the Council for the State talked about personal preferences and how elected officials and the government can legislate his personal preferences,” Mulfort said. “So we're talking about personal preferences versus actually truth. That's the problem.”
In a statement provided to Central Florida Public Media, AHCA said “The Agency was pleased to see the circuit court swiftly reject the plaintiff’s politically motivated attack on the State’s obligation—and duty—to keep the public informed through public service announcements.”
What AHCA says about Amendment 4...
Published earlier this month, AHCA’s “transparency website” is made to dissuade Floridians from voting on Amendment 4, suggesting that passing it would expose women and children to health risks or remove regulations in place to protect them. However, the website does not provide examples of how. The website also points at the amendment’s use of the word “viability.”
Amendment 4 ballot language reads as follows:
“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. This amendment does not change the Legislature's constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
AHCA states that the word viability is problematic because “the concept of viability is inherently flexible as it varies with each pregnancy.”
"Viability" and ballot language
However, the term does have a definition in the state as “ the stage of fetal development when the life of a fetus is sustainable outside the womb through standard medical measures.”
According to research by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the majority of experts agree that 24 weeks is the earliest age a fetus is potentially viable.
Additionally, Amendment 4’s ballot language was approved by the Florida Supreme Court. Mulfort said that should be validation enough.
“What we're seeing on the website, what we're seeing on their billboards, what we're seeing throughout their campaign ads, is just flat-out lies surrounding what Amendment 4 is,” Mulfort said.
Judge Sjostrom disagreed with the assessment that the Florida Supreme Court validated the ballot language stating “the court expressed no intent to address the debate regarding the breadth, ramifications or ambiguity of the proposal or for its analysis to serve as record to permit the judiciary to serve as arbiters of the propriety of such statements during a referendum campaign.”
The decision is a blow to Floridians Protecting Freedom's momentum in its campaign for Amendment 4. With the election just weeks away, Mulfort said the ACLU has a lot of work to do.
“Right now we're looking at all legal options, but we are going to continue to educate the public and ensure that the public knows what Amendment 4 is versus what Amendment 4 is not,” she said.
