Florida abortion amendment: Financial statement fight heads to state Supreme Court

Abortion-rights advocates are asking the Florida Supreme Court to throw out the latest financial statement related to a proposed constitutional amendment that seeks to ensure abortion access in the state.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group pushing the abortion amendment, filed a writ of quo warranto on Thursday, petitioning the state to explain by what authority they revised what's known as the "fiscal impact statement."

More to the point, the filing argues the state overstepped in reconvening the Financial Impact Estimating Conference (FIEC) in July without a court order telling it to do so.

The fiscal impact statement, which will be printed on ballots, has been the latest battle in the war over abortion rights in Florida.

Amendment 4, a measure on the November ballot that would need at least 60% of the vote to pass, would allow abortions up to fetal viability, usually about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

But Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans are pushing to keep the Heartbeat Protection Act , a ban on abortions after six weeks, on the books.

In June, the governor launched the " Florida Freedom Fund ," a political spending committee aimed to defeat the abortion measure and another ballot question to allow recreational marijuana (Amendment 3), as well as support conservative candidates across the state. As of July 12, the committee had $128,900 in contributions.

DeSantis has called Amendment 4 " very, very extreme ," and said the Florida Supreme Court " dropped the ball " allowing the measure on the ballot.

Fiscal impact statement: Indeterminate or politically charged?

In an unprecedented move, House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, both Republicans, decided to reconvene the financial impact panel after the six-week abortion ban was upheld in April.

The FIEC's original statement finalized last year deemed the amendment's fiscal impact to be "indeterminate." But once the six-week abortion ban was upheld, abortion-rights proponents argued and won in trial court that tighter abortion restrictions would cost the state more money and therefore need a revised statement.

That case was still wrapped up in the courts in an appeal by the state when the FIEC agreed on a rewrite of the statement that included language abortion-rights proponents said was "politically charged."

With the new statement, the state's appeal was dismissed as " moot " by a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal on Monday, leaving room for Floridians Protecting Freedom to raise new legal claims.

Its petition states: "The Conference ... has the authority to initially adopt a Financial Impact Statement in exactly one scenario: when the Secretary of State notifies the Conference that a citizen-initiative petition has met the criteria for review.

"And the Conference has the authority to revise a Financial Impact Statement in exactly one scenario: when ordered to do so by a court of original jurisdiction. One scours the Florida Statutes in vain for any language purporting to authorize what the State did here."

In a statement, Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Plantation said the state “knowingly overstepped in its unprecedented move” to revise the fiscal impact statement.

“I applaud the advocates from Yes on 4 Florida for taking this fight to the Supreme Court to defend against the State’s latest politically motivated attack on Amendment 4 — and come November, I have confidence that Floridians will leave partisan differences aside to stand united in voting against undue government interference in private medical decisions,” she said.

State pays outsiders to sway the FIEC

The Florida Legislature's Office of Economic & Demographic Research and the FIEC said the original fiscal impact statement was indeterminate because analysts usually do not consider future litigation costs that result over an approved amendment.

As previously reported by the USA TODAY Network-Florida, in the second round of meetings in July, the state brought in Chris Spencer , once DeSantis' budget chief and now head of the State Board of Administration; a researcher from the Heritage Foundation, a well-known conservative think tank; and an academic from the Catholic University of America to sway the results.

The Executive Office of the Governor paid Michael New , an assistant professor of social research at CUA's Busch School of Business in Washington, D.C., $300 an hour to speak at the FIEC meetings. And the Florida House of Representatives paid Rachel Greszler , a senior research fellow with Heritage's Roe Institute, also based in Washington, $75 an hour to represent the House.

Throughout the process , Spencer argued that potential litigation over the amendment would cost the state. "We believe from the governor's office that it's inevitable that litigation is going to occur, and we need to account for that," Spencer said.

Ana Goñi-Lessan , state watchdog reporter for the USA TODAY Network – Florida, can be reached at agonilessan@gannett.com .

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida abortion amendment: Financial statement fight heads to state Supreme Court