By Jim Saunders ©2024 The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — A second Florida Supreme Court case has emerged over a “financial impact statement” that will appear on the November ballot with a proposed constitutional amendment about abortion rights.
The Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee filed a notice this week that is a first step in asking the Supreme Court to review a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal that said a lawsuit about an initial financial impact statement was moot, according to documents posted Friday on the Supreme Court website.
The committee also filed a separate petition this week at the Supreme Court that seeks to invalidate a revised financial impact statement that Floridians Protecting Freedom contends is politicized and inaccurate.
Financial impact statements, which usually receive little attention, provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget. But the abortion impact statement has become embroiled in controversy as Floridians Protecting Freedom seeks to pass an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution.
A group of economists known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement for the proposed amendment in November 2023. But on April 1, the Florida Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to take effect.
Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling.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 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 appeal, however, legislative leaders directed the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revamp the statement.
The conference finished revisions last week, but the new version drew heavy criticism from Floridians Protecting Freedom. After the revisions, the 1st District Court of Appeal on Monday dismissed the pending case, with a three-judge panel saying it declined to “exercise our jurisdiction to decide a moot question.”
Floridians Protecting Freedom issued a news release Monday that described the appeals court’s decision as “a significant setback for Florida voters who deserve transparent, accurate, and lawful information before casting their ballots this November.” The committee followed Wednesday by filing a notice that it was taking the case to the Supreme Court, according to the documents posted Friday.
The notice, as is common, does not detail arguments the committee will make at the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the committee Wednesday filed a separate petition at the Supreme Court contending that House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, did not have the authority to direct the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revise the statement after Cooper rejected the initial version.
Floridians Protecting Freedom attorneys contended in the petition that the statement could have only been revised after a court order, not because of direction from state leaders.
“The state’s lack of authority to unilaterally revise a financial impact statement does make good sense,” the petition said. “Consider the chaos caused by the alternative: The state could change financial impact statements on a whim, at any time, for any reason — providing sponsors, litigants, and the public little or no time to digest the statements or to challenge them before they are irrevocably placed on the ballot.”
The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the 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.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state Republican leaders are fighting the proposed amendment. Representatives of DeSantis and the House spearheaded controversial revisions in the financial impact statement.
In part, the revised statement says 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.”
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