With time running short before the November election, the Florida Supreme Court on Monday signaled that it will move quickly to resolve two cases about a financial impact statement that will appear on the ballot with a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights.
The Supreme Court issued orders that said it has “expedited” proceedings in the cases, which involve a battle between the Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee and state officials about the financial impact statement. The political committee is leading efforts to try to pass the ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit in April arguing that an initial financial impact statement for the amendment was outdated and needed to be revised. A Leon County circuit judge agreed, but the state took the case to the 1st District Court of Appeal.
Amid the appeal, House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, directed a state panel to revise the statement. But Floridians Protecting Freedom contends the revised statement is politicized and inaccurate.
Also, the revised statement led the 1st District Court of Appeal to rule that the case about the initial statement was moot.
Floridians Protecting Freedom last week filed a petition at the Supreme Court arguing that Renner and Passidomo did not have authority to direct the state panel to revise the financial impact statement. The political committee’s attorneys contended that the statement could have only been revised after a court order, not because of direction from state leaders.
The political committee also separately filed a notice that was a first step in asking the Supreme Court to review the 1st District Court of Appeal’s decision that the lawsuit about the initial statement was moot.
In the orders Monday, the Supreme Court gave the state until 5 p.m. Friday to respond to the petition about the authority of Renner and Passidomo. It also gave Floridians Protecting Freedom until 5 p.m. Friday to file a brief in the case about the 1st District Court of Appeal’s mootness decision.
Financial impact statements, which usually receive little attention, provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget. They are crafted by a panel of economists known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference.
The panel released an initial statement for the proposed abortion amendment in November 2023. But on April 1, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to take effect in the state.
In its lawsuit filed in April, Floridians Protecting Freedom argued that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling.
Leon Circuit Judge John Cooper ordered the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to draft a new version. But state lawyers appealed, contending that Cooper did not have legal authority to issue such an order.
The Tallahassee-based appeals court never decided whether Cooper had such authority because it said the case was moot after the Financial Impact Estimating Conference issued the revised statement this month.
The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the November 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 state House on the Financial Impact Estimating Conference spearheaded controversial revisions to 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.”
The November ballot will be set after Florida’s Aug. 20 primary elections.
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