Florida Dems file complaint against state agency webpage opposing abortion amendment

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried filed a complaint with a state attorney on Sept. 13, 2024, against Jason Weida, secretary for the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration. (Photo by Jackie Llanos/Florida Phoenix)

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and two private citizens filed criminal complaints Friday against the head of the state agency that’s maintaining a website pushing messaging opposing the proposed abortion-rights amendment.

With 52 days until the election, the legal pressure keeps mounting against the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration’s webpage published on Sept. 5 claiming that Amendment 4, which would protect access to abortion until viability, “threatens women’s safety.”

The complaints from Fried in Leon County, Orlando real estate agent Ellyson Kennedy in Orange County, and Tampa Bay solar executive Angelique Mathena in Hillsborough County are the latest challenges to the webpage and subsequent television and radio ads that critics have called out for using state funds to attempt to move voters against the amendment.

“This campaign was created and funded using taxpayer dollars in order to persuade Florida voters to vote against Amendment 4 in the 2024 General Election in Florida. Using an official government agency for political campaigning is prohibited by state law,” Fried wrote in her letter to Jack Campbell, state attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit in Tallahassee.

For the amendment to become a part of the Florida Constitution, 60% of voters would have to approve it.

Two additional legal challenges claiming state interference with the abortion-rights amendment emerged this week:

• The ACLU of Florida and Southern Legal Counsel , on behalf of Floridians Protecting Freedom, the sponsor of the amendment, filed a lawsuit against AHCA in the Leon County court on Thursday.
• A South Florida appellate attorney has asked the Florida Supreme Court to stop DeSantis, AHCA Secretary Jason Weida, and Attorney General Ashley Moody from interfering in the voting on Amendment 4. The state’s highest court has agreed to expedite that case.

DeSantis’ state attorneys

The state attorneys in those jurisdictions are not obliged to do anything. Two of the prosecutors asked to act on Friday are DeSantis appointees, named after the governor removed their predecessors because he disapproved of their progressive policies. Those prosecutors are Andrew Bain in Orange and Osceola counties, who replaced Monique Worrell; and Suzy Lopez in Hillsborough County, who replaced Andrew Warren.

Both Lopez and Bain are running for re-election against Warren and Worrell.

All three of the complaints submitted Friday cite a Florida statute that prohibits state officers and employees from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election.” A violation of that law is a misdemeanor of the first degree with a punishment of up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Weida posted a link to the webpage on X on Sept. 5, calling it a transparency page meant to “combat the lies and disinformation surrounding Florida’s abortion laws.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis has defended the AHCA webpage, comparing it to a public service announcement.

“It’s not an anti-Amendment 4,” DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday. “What it is, it’s providing information about what Florida law is and the resources that are available under that law.”

AHCA did not respond to Florida Phoenix’s requests for comment.