Amendment 4 backers sue Florida over letters sent to TV stations for abortion ad

A political committee spearheading attempts to approve a ballot question on abortion rights filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, alleging that the state of Florida violated the First Amendment by threatening television stations over an ad supporting the issue. The Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee, in part, seeks 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

The lawsuit was filed amid an intense political dispute about what will appear on the November 5 ballot as Amendment 4.  Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is opposing the amendment, which Floridians Protecting Freedom began pursuing last year after DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed legislation largely prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The Florida Department of Health issued letters to TV stations earlier this month requesting that they stop airing a Floridians Protecting Freedom advertisement. The government claimed the ad included misleading and “dangerous” information and threatened to seek injunctions or criminal charges against the stations.

According to the lawsuit, the advertisement portrayed the narrative of a woman who was diagnosed with brain cancer while she was 20 weeks pregnant in 2022. Doctors told the woman they could not treat her with chemotherapy or radiation while pregnant, so she had an abortion, the lawsuit says. The advertisement claims that current Florida legislation would prohibit abortions in such instances. The Department of Health response refuted the claim, stating that the six-week rule makes exceptions for abortions to save pregnant women’s lives or to “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” The letter threatened action against TV stations, citing a statute aimed at a “sanitary nuisance.”

According to the lawsuit, at least one television station, WINK in Fort Myers, ceased showing the commercial. It also questioned whether the woman in the advertisement would have been eligible for exceptions to the six-week abortion law.

“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,” according to the lawsuit. “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 claimed a First Amendment violation due to “viewpoint discrimination.” “Here, the state is attempting to censor core political speech with which it disagrees,” according to the lawsuit. “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 states 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.”