The coalition behind a Florida ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution sued the state’s health department on Wednesday over its attempts to shut down an television advertisement supporting the measure.
The lawsuit is the latest volley in an escalating war between the coalition, Floridians Protecting Freedom, and Florida’s rightwing government, which has alarmed civil rights groups, fair elections organizations and even the Federal Communications Commission over its tactics to undermine the ballot initiative, which will appear before voters in November.
Earlier this month, the Florida health department sent cease-and-desist letters to local news stations over an ad featuring a woman, identified as Caroline from Tampa, Florida, who speaks about being diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant.
“The doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline says in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”
The letters, which were signed by John Wilson, Florida health department general counsel, said the claim that women can’t get life-saving abortions in Florida was “categorically false” and the state had the authority to criminally prosecute media outlets that continued to run Caroline’s ad. (Wilson left that job days after sending those letters.) At least one TV station stopped airing it, according to the lawsuit filed by Floridians Protecting Freedom.
Although Florida’s six-week abortion ban permits the procedure in medical emergencies, doctors across the country say such exceptions are worded so vaguely that they force doctors to deny patients abortions or wait until they get sick enough to treat them legally. A New York doctor recently told the Guardian that she had treated a woman with an ectopic pregnancy – which is nonviable and potentially life-threatening if left untreated – who had been turned away from a Florida hospital.
If Floridians successfully pass the pro-abortion rights ballot measure – which needs 60% of the vote to succeed – the state’s ban would be overturned.
“The state of Florida’s crusade against amendment 4 is unconstitutional government interference – full stop,” Lauren Brenzel, director of the campaign for the ballot measure, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The state cannot coerce television stations into removing political speech from the airwaves in an attempt to keep their abortion ban in place.”
Over the last several weeks, Florida’s government, led by its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has levied a series of attacks on the measure and its backers. Law enforcement officials have investigated people who signed a petition to get the measure on the ballot, while the Florida agency for healthcare administration created a website attacking the amendment. Floridians Protecting Freedom sued over that website, but a judge ruled it could remain up.
On Friday, the Florida office of election crimes and security issued a report claiming that the agency believed Floridians Protecting Freedom may have “submitted a large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions” in support of the measure. In a statement, Brenzel denied the claims and said: “What we are seeing now is nothing more than dishonest distractions and desperate attempts to silence voters.”
In its Wednesday lawsuit, which was filed in the US district court for the northern district of Florida in Tallahassee, Floridians Protecting Freedom asks the court to declare the cease-and-desist letters to be “unconstitutional coercion and viewpoint discrimination” and to block Florida’s government from following through on their threats of prosecution of media outlets.
“Opponents of the measure are, of course, free to engage in their own oppositional speech,” the lawsuit reads, “but the state cannot use its coercive powers as the state to attempt to chill or suppress the speech of FPF or others who would speak in support of the amendment or facilitate that speech”.
The lawsuit names Wilson as a defendant in his individual capacity, as well as the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo. Florida’s health department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Florida is one of 10 states with an abortion-related measure on the ballot this year. Although Nevada and Arizona – two key presidential battlegrounds – also have similar measures, Florida’s may be the most high-profile, because it would restore abortion access to a state that had become a southern abortion haven after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Its six-week ban went into effect earlier this year.
