Abortion amendment group asks Florida Supreme Court to nix rewritten statement

TALLAHASSEE — A political committee leading efforts to pass a constitutional amendment on abortion rights has asked the Florida Supreme Court to invalidate a revised “financial impact statement” that would appear on the November ballot with the initiative.

The Floridians Protecting Freedom committee on Wednesday filed a petition contending that House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, did not have the authority to direct a panel to revise the statement after a circuit judge rejected an earlier version.

Financial impact statements provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget. A panel known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference issued a revised statement July 15, but Floridians Protecting Freedom contends the statement is politicized and inaccurate.

The petition filed at the Supreme Court said the statement could have only been revised after a court order, not because of direction from state leaders.

“The state’s lack of authority to unilaterally revise a financial impact statement does make good sense,” Floridians Protecting Freedom attorneys wrote. “Consider the chaos caused by the alternative: The state could change financial impact statements on a whim, at any time, for any reason — providing sponsors, litigants, and the public little or no time to digest the statements or to challenge them before they are irrevocably placed on the ballot.”

The Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement for the proposed amendment in November 2023. But on April 1, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to take effect.

Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit on April 5 arguing that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling.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 and ordered the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to draft a new version.

State lawyers appealed, arguing that Cooper did not have legal authority to issue such an order. Amid the appeal, Renner and Passidomo directed the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revamp the statement.

The revised statement led the 1st District Court of Appeal on Monday to dismiss the pending legal case, saying it was moot.

“The result is that, absent this (Supreme) Court’s intervention, the state intends to place a Financial Impact Statement on the ballot that is plainly misleading in contravention (of a Supreme Court precedent and a section of state law) and the circuit court order,” Wednesday’s petition said. “But here’s the thing. This (Supreme) Court need not — and should not — sanction this unlawful outcome, for one very simple reason: The state never had the power to reconvene the conference and revise the statement outside the parameters established by the circuit court.”

The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the ballot as Amendment 4. It 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.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state Republican leaders are fighting the proposed amendment. Representatives of DeSantis and the House spearheaded revisions in the financial impact statement.

In part, the revised statement says there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds. Litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time. Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”

By Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida