By Jim Saunders ©2024 The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights pushed back Wednesday against the state’s arguments in a Florida Supreme Court case about the validity of a revised “financial impact statement” that would appear on the November ballot.
The Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee, which is sponsoring the proposed amendment, said in a 20-page brief that Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R–Naples, and House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, did not have legal authority to direct a state panel to revise the statement.
Financial impact statements, which usually draw little attention, provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget. But the revised statement for the abortion amendment has drawn controversy because Floridians Protecting Freedom contends it is politicized and misleading.
Lawyers for the political committee argued in Wednesday’s brief that the statement could only be revised by court order, not by direction of legislative leaders. The brief said the state “seeks to aggrandize to the Legislature’s presiding officers sole and unreviewable discretion as to any matter related to financial impact statements.”
“Under the state’s interpretation, such officers could direct any group of people to adopt any number of statements at any time, regardless of judicial actions,” the committee’s lawyers wrote. “Under the state’s interpretation, whichever statement the presiding officers ultimately chose would ‘supersede’ all others and ‘be approved by operation of law.’”
But in a brief filed last week, the state argued that Passidomo and Renner were “fully empowered to reconvene” the Financial Impact Estimating Conference, the state panel that revised the statement.
“The sponsor (Floridians Protecting Freedom) contends that the Financial Impact Estimating Conference lacked statutory authority to revise the statement unless a court orders the conference to do so,” the state lawyers wrote. “Under that view, the conference is powerless to revise even a statement that it later realizes is misleading unless someone happens to sue on that exact basis.”
Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a petition on July 24 at the Supreme Court to try to invalidate the revised statement, which the Financial Impact Estimating Conference issued on July 15.
The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 4. It says, in part, 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.”
The Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement for the proposed amendment in November 2023. But on April 1, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to take effect.
Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit on April 5 arguing that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling. Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper agreed in June and ordered the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to draft a new version.
State lawyers appealed, arguing that Cooper did not have legal authority to issue such an order. Amid the legal fight, Renner and Passidomo directed the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revise the statement.
The revised statement says, in part, that there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds. 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. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time. Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”
Representatives of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida House on the Financial Impact Estimating Conference successfully argued for controversial parts of the statement, such as raising the possibility that public money could subsidize abortions. DeSantis and other state Republican leaders oppose the proposed abortion amendment.
In the brief Wednesday, Floridians Protecting Freedom contended that revising the statement at the direction of Passidomo and Renner violated a statute and the state Constitution.
“Allowing the presiding officers to order new analyses and financial impact statements — especially when it results in avoiding the effect of a court order — would blatantly violate the (constitutional) separation of powers,” the brief said.
But the state’s lawyers wrote last week that Floridians Protecting Freedom took part in meetings held by the conference before the revised statement was issued. The brief said Floridians Protecting Freedom “participated vigorously in the process, sending a representative to testify at all three of the conference’s public meetings and submitting three volleys of lobbying documents. Far from trying to stop the process in its tracks, the sponsor pushed for its own preferred revisions to the statement.”
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