Judge blocks Florida from threatening TV stations over Amendment 4 ads – NBC 6 South Florida

A federal judge has ordered Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to stop threatening to prosecute local television stations for airing a political ad promoting an abortion rights referendum that will be on the ballot in November.

In a strongly worded ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction calling threats from the Florida Department of Health “unconstitutional coercion.”

“To keep it simple for the state of Florida: It’s First Amendment stupid,” Walker wrote in his ruling.

At the heart of the dispute is Amendment 4, a measure that would amend the state constitution to protect the right to abortion until the fetus is viable, i.e. starting around the 20th week of pregnancy. The change would reverse a six-week abortion law that took effect earlier this year.

The group behind the campaign to support the abortion rights measure, Floridians Protecting Freedom, produced the commercial in which a Tallahassee mother describes how she was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant, before a series of state restrictions took effect Effect.

“The doctors knew that if I didn't terminate my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, my life, and my daughter would lose her mother,” she says, adding that current state law would not have allowed her to have an abortion before she received it could begin cancer treatment.

Earlier this month, the health department sent cease-and-desist letters to dozens of local television stations that aired the ad, including NBC6, saying it could invoke a “health harassment law” and bring criminal charges against them. At least one network stopped broadcasting the ad, the judge noted in his ruling, writing that it served as “further evidence of its coercive nature.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit accusing the state of “using public resources and state authority to advance the state's preferred characterization of its anti-abortion laws as 'truth' and to denigrate opposing viewpoints as 'lies.'”

The lawsuit named Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who heads the state's health department, and its former attorney general John Wilson as defendants. Wilson resigned from his position last week.

It's called “The Amendment Limiting Government Interference in Abortion.” Amendment 4 is on the ballot in less than three weeks, but now a new lawsuit is questioning whether it would take effect even if 60 percent of voters approved it.

In his ruling, Walker argued that while the state could continue to fight the amendment, it should not “trample” the plaintiff's free speech.

“While defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree to this simple fact, plaintiff’s political advertising is political speech – speech at the core of the First Amendment,” Walker said. “The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disapproved speech 'false'.”

In a statement, the campaign manager for Floridians Protecting Freedom called the court's decision a “decisive first victory.”

“The court confirmed what we always knew: the government cannot silence the truth about Florida’s extreme abortion ban,” said Lauren Brenzel. “It is a deadly ban that endangers the lives of women.” This ruling is a stark reminder that Floridians will not back down in the face of government intimidation.”

Florida is one of nine states that have introduced a measure protecting abortion access on the Nov. 5 ballot.

It's also the most expensive, according to media tracking firm AdImpact – with about $150 million spent on ads so far, The Associated Press reports. That spending total includes millions the state Republican Party spent at DeSantis' behest to urge voters to reject the question.

In order for the ballot measure to pass in Florida, it needs the support of 60% of those who vote for it.

DeSantis has vowed to reject Amendment 4 and used allies in his administration to exploit state authorities against the measure, including using the Florida Department of Health to launch a website Attacking the ballot measure and the Office of Election Crimes and Security, an election police unit created by DeSantis to begin investigating allegations of fraud in signature gathering approved for the vote. That office released a report claiming that “a large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions” had been submitted to get the question on the ballot. The state also announced a $328,000 fine against the campaign group.

Read Judge Walker's ruling:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.