By Dara Kam ©2024 The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — In a defeat for supporters of a proposal aimed at enshrining abortion rights in the state Constitution, the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for a revised “financial impact statement” to appear on the November ballot.
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, a political committee backing the proposed amendment, contends it is politicized and misleading.
The committee filed a lawsuit alleging that House Speaker Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, and House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, lacked the power to direct a panel of economists, known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference, to revise the statement. The legislative leaders made the move amid legal wrangling after a circuit judge’s decision that an initial statement needed to be rewritten.
But Wednesday’s 6-1 ruling authored by Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, rejected the committee’s arguments.
Representatives of Floridians Protecting Freedom “actively participated in the estimating conference process that they now challenge, without questioning or objecting to the conference’s authority to issue a revised financial impact statement on its own initiative. For that basic reason, the petitioners waived or forfeited any reasonable claim to extraordinary relief from this court,” the chief justice wrote in the opinion joined by Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Jamie Grosshans and Meredith Sasso. Justice Renatha Francis agreed and wrote a concurring opinion. Justice Jorge Labarga dissented.
Backers of the proposed amendment, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 4, said Wednesday the revised statement is designed to confuse 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. Adding a deceptive financial impact statement to deliberately confuse voters is a shameful attempt to hide the fact that Florida law currently bans abortion before many women know they are pregnant with no exceptions for rape, incest or a woman’s health,” Lauren Brenzel, director of the political committee, said in a statement.
The Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement about the proposed amendment in November 2023. But legal wrangling about the statement began after an April 1 Supreme Court decision that broke with decades of judicial precedent and allowed a 2023 law to take effect that prevented abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
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.
Amid a state appeal of Cooper’s ruling, Passidomo and Renner directed the conference to meet. The conference held three meetings in July before issuing the revised version, with the controversial changes driven by economists representing Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state House.
Supporters of the amendment “never questioned” the panel’s authority to “voluntarily adopt” a revised statement, Muniz wrote Wednesday.
“Instead, they actively participated in every step of the revision process without objection. They offered oral and written presentations at each of the estimating conference’s three July meetings, thoroughly and forcefully advocating their position on what the revised financial impact statement should say,” he added.
The ruling denied a request that the court order another impact statement “without expressing any views on the substantive legality of the revised statement itself.”
But Labarga, one of two justices on the seven-member court who was not appointed by DeSantis, said the court should decide “the legitimate questions” raised in the lawsuit about whether the legislative leaders had the authority to order a revised statement.
“As the majority describes, this case involves an extremely fluid procedural history … It is not an overstatement to say that the circumstances of this case are quite convoluted,” Labarga wrote, noting the timeline leading up to Wednesday’s decision. “All of these circumstances led to a legal quagmire, one that does not lend itself to today’s outcome. This case, involving unique facts, untested legal issues, and a time-sensitive matter of statewide importance, calls for more.”
The revised statement that will appear on the ballot 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.”
Critics of Amendment 4, including DeSantis, contend that it would do away with the state’s abortion restrictions except a previous amendment that required parental notification before minors can receive abortions. DeSantis’ chief of staff, James Uthmeier, is heading two political committees gathering millions of dollars to fight the abortion measure and another proposed constitutional amendment that would allow adults to use recreational marijuana.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberty Union of Florida called Wednesday’s ruling a “direct affront to the rights of Florida voters, who deserve accurate and lawful information” when deciding on constitutional amendments.
“The politicization of these financial impact statements erodes public trust in our institutions and threatens the integrity of every future ballot measure. The implications of this decision are dire — the court has effectively granted the state unchecked authority to manipulate voter information without any meaningful oversight, setting the stage for future abuses of power where state officials can sidestep the courts and the law with impunity,” Michelle Morton, staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.
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