Abortion rights groups argue Florida is trying to throw up barriers to amendment

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Abortion-rights groups in Florida are locked in a battle with the state over the cost for a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week ban.

The fight is over a seemingly obscure fiscal impact statement estimating the cost to the state for passing the proposed constitutional amendment. It highlights how both pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion forces are clawing for every inch of ground ahead of a campaign that will see tens of millions of dollars spent across the country’s third-largest state.

And, abortion-rights activists say, it shows how the state’s Republican leaders are trying to defeat the November ballot measure at every turn.

“They almost always put up as many procedural obstacles as possible,” Anna Hochkammer of the Florida Women's Freedom Coalition said. “They try and make these processes as expensive and complicated as possible, and this is another example of that tactic.”

Florida law requires each ballot initiative to include a financial impact statement for voters to consider. The statement for the abortion-rights amendment — which would allow for the procedure in the state up to the point of a pregnancy’s viability — was finalized in November of last year, well before the state’s current, six-week ban went into effect. At the time, state economists said the impact of the six-week ban on state finances could be significant, but because the law had not yet taken effect, there was not enough data to accurately crunch the numbers.

Abortion-rights groups sued, demanding that the state update its estimates now that the ban has gone into place. They argue that the tighter ban is costing the state significantly more money than pre-Roe restrictions, and that a new, revised figure should reflect that.

Few expect the financial impact statement — either the one currently in place or a revised one — to be the deciding factor in this election. But it shows how both sides are scrambling for every possible advantage they could get.

Already, the proponents of the amendment scored a small victory, after Florida Republican legislative leaders called on a consortium of state economists to revise the fiscal impact statement amid a court fight. But the decision made by Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and House Speaker Paul Renner to reconvene the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to reassess the initiative only came after groups won a victory in a lower court.

The estimating conference will meet on Monday and again on July 8. Estimating conferences usually require two days for public comment and extensive discussion before they provide a statement. The conference is organized by the state Office of Economic and Demographic Research, and conferees include top budget staffers from the House, Senate and the governor’s office.

The initiative, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 4, is supported by the Floridians Protecting Freedom Committee, which wants the estimating conference to answer questions that the economists could not answer when the last statement was published more than seven months ago. Many of those uncertainties limited details behind the anticipated impact brought by the state's ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which took effect in May.

Keisha Mulfort, a spokesperson for ACLU Florida, which supports the ballot measure, said the meeting will be the first time the Financial Impact Estimating Conference has been “voluntarily” reconvened.

“We anticipated a simple, collaborative process and that the State and Floridians Protecting Freedom would share the goal of ensuring voters have accurate information when they cast their vote,” Mulfort wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, in the lawsuit, the State is claiming that the Conference can attach any statement they choose to any citizen-sponsored amendment with no recourse in the courts.”

Even as legislative leaders have reconvened the estimating conference, the state continues to fight the lawsuit, seeking a revised impact statement in court.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office pointed to the state’s initial appeals court filing in response to a question asking why Florida has continued its challenge of a lower court’s ruling — even though the conference has already received orders by the Legislature to redraft the statement — and did not provide further comment. The filing lists the case law and other evidence that the state has brought up to fight the lower court decision.

John Morgan, who tussled with the state over impact statements while successfully leading ballot initiatives that legalized medical marijuana in 2016 and raised the state’s minimum wage to $15 in 2020, said lawyers for the state have bigger plans that require the appeals court to overturn the lower court’s order.

“There's some constitutional scholar that's laying pipe for something down the road,” Morgan, a prominent Democratic megadonor, said. “The one thing that legislators do not like is for the people to have a say in their democracy, other than electing them to go do the bidding of special interests.”

The campaign to put Amendment 4 on the ballot began after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the six-week ban into law in April of last year and faced several hurdles from the state.

Moody asked the state Supreme Court to block the measure, but failed to persuade them to strike the initiative from the November ballot. In a separate ruling issued on the same day in April, the high court also upheld the state’s previous 15-week ban, which DeSantis signed in 2022. That ruling also triggered language that removed the 15-week ban and replaced it with the six-week ban on May 1.

That all came well after the impact statement was finalized last November. Without the six-week ban, and at the time ongoing litigation over the 15-week ban, the Financial Impact Estimating Conference discussed several limitations that left the economists unable to provide any details.

“Because there are several possible outcomes related to this litigation that differ widely in their effects, the impact of the proposed amendment on state and local government revenues and costs, if any, cannot be determined,” the November statement said.

With no other recourse, Floridians Protecting Freedom sued members of the estimating conference to reconvene. A judge’s subsequent order to hold the meetings prompted the state’s appeal, which argues that a circuit court was not the proper venue for the case.

Senate spokesperson Katie Betta declined to discuss details due to the ongoing litigation, and she instead pointed to court briefs filed by Moody’s office. They brought up a similar court challenge that the campaign behind the 2020 minimum wage initiative also won in court, but that decision was overturned by the appeals court, which ruled the lower court did not have jurisdiction.

An analysis submitted to the estimating conference by the Amendment 4 campaign before the meetings in November predicted the state would see significant savings in state health care costs should it pass. The analysis said pregnancies that would have been terminated, if not for strict state restrictions, were 40 times more likely to result in mothers and children living in poverty. Along with savings in subsidized health care and child welfare programs, the state would also see savings from less public school enrollment, they argued. Criminal justice costs would also be saved since the state would no longer have to enforce the six-week ban.

“We are not asking for the Conference to do or say anything that wasn't already in its analysis,” Mulfort wrote in an email. “We are asking for an accurate and non-misleading statement of Amendment 4’s financial impact.”