TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A political committee leading efforts to pass a ballot proposal on abortion rights filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging the state violated the First Amendment by threatening television stations over an ad supporting the measure.
The Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee, in part, is seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent state officials from “taking any further actions to coerce, threaten or intimate repercussions directly or indirectly to television stations, broadcasters or other parties for airing FPF’s (Floridians Protecting Freedom’s) speech, or undertaking enforcement action against FPF for running political advertisements or engaging in other speech protected under the First Amendment.”
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The lawsuit came amid a fierce political battle about what will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot as Amendment 4. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is fighting the amendment, which Floridians Protecting Freedom began pursuing last year after DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a law largely preventing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Florida Department of Health early this month sent letters to TV stations calling for them to stop running a Floridians Protecting Freedom ad. The department alleged that the ad included false and “dangerous” information and threatened to seek injunctions or possible criminal prosecution against the stations.
The lawsuit said the ad told the story of a woman, who while 20 weeks pregnant in 2022, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Doctors told the woman they could not treat her with chemotherapy or radiation while pregnant, so she had an abortion, the lawsuit said. The ad asserts that current Florida law would prevent abortions in such cases.
The Department of Health letter disputed the assertion, saying that the six-week law includes exceptions to allow abortions to save pregnant women’s lives or to “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” In threatening action against TV stations, the letter cited a law aimed at targeting a “sanitary nuisance.”
The lawsuit said at least one television station, WINK in Fort Myers, stopped running the ad. It also disputed that exceptions in the six-week abortion law would have applied to the woman in the ad.
“The election is just three weeks away, and FPF is running and intends to continue running television advertisements and to engage in other political speech advocating for the passage of Amendment 4 and calling attention to the dangerous consequences of current Florida law on women’s rights and health,” the lawsuit said. “It is intolerable that FPF do so with the state dangling a sword of Damocles over anyone who would facilitate that core political expression — threatening broadcasters with criminal prosecution if they air viewpoints the state disagrees with, and silencing FPF’s speech in the process.”
The lawsuit also alleged a First Amendment violation based on “viewpoint discrimination.”
“Here, the state is attempting to censor core political speech with which it disagrees,” the lawsuit said. “To the extent strict scrutiny applies, the state’s blunderbuss threats of prosecution are not narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.”
The proposed amendment, in part, says 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.”