State has only days to respond in court fight over abortion amendment financial statement

With the election approaching, the Florida Supreme Court has told the state to respond by the end of this week to a filing by advocates to throw out the latest financial statement for a November ballot measure on abortion.

The case was ordered to be expedited , or sped up, on Monday.

Lawyers for Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, House Speaker Paul Renner, the Florida Impact Estimating Conference (FIEC) and members Amy Baker, Azhar Khan, Executive Director of the State Board of Administration Chris Spencer and Rachel Greszler , a senior research fellow with Heritage's Roe Institute, have until 5 p.m. Friday to respond.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group that filed what's known as a " petition for quo warranto ," then will have until 9 a.m. on Aug. 7, the following Wednesday, to reply.

It's a speedy turnaround that could push advocates for and against abortion, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans, to the finish line in their campaign over Amendment 4 's fiscal impact statement.

The initiative, which needs at least 60% of the vote to pass, would allow abortions up to fetal viability, usually about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The fiscal impact statement, which will be printed on ballots, could sway voters to reject or keep the Heartbeat Protection act, a ban on abortion after six weeks.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group supporting the abortion rights amendment, filed for a writ of quo warranto on Thursday, petitioning the state to explain by what authority they revised the fiscal impact statement.

As previously reported , the group argues the state overstepped in reconvening the FIEC in July without a court order telling it to do so.

The panel'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 the measure needed a revised statement.

In an unprecedented move, Renner and Passidomo, both Republicans, decided to reconvene the financial impact panel while the case was under appeal.

The FIEC, which met three times in July, agreed on a rewrite of the statement that included language abortion-rights proponents said was "politically charged."

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal later dismissed the case. "We decline to exercise our jurisdiction to decide a moot question," the opinion said.

The petition filed by Floridians Protecting Freedom says 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."

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: State has only days to respond in court fight over abortion amendment financial statement