©2024 The News Service of Florida
After a state panel Monday revised a “financial impact statement” for a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights, an appeals court quickly asked lawyers to file arguments about whether a legal battle about an earlier version of the statement is moot.
The 1st District Court of Appeal on Tuesday ordered attorneys for the state and Floridians Protecting Freedom, a political committee leading efforts to pass the abortion amendment, to make filings this week.
A panel known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference late Monday revised the statement, which will appear on the ballot with the abortion amendment.
Financial impact statements provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget.
The Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement for the abortion proposal 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filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling.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 with the committee, but the state appealed to the 1st District Court of Appeal, where the case has been pending.
Amid the case, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, and House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, directed the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to begin meeting again to revise the statement.
The proposed amendment, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 4, 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.”
