A federal judge has declined to continue granting a preliminary injunction prohibiting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration from pursuing legal action to stop a pro-abortion ad the state government calls “misinformation.”
District Judge Mark Waller said in his Nov. 6 order that though he supported the plaintiff’s former claim that it would face irreparable harm to its constitutional rights protecting its political speech leading up to the election, he could not grant the injunction now that it was over.
The issue centers on an organization called Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) advocating for Amendment 4, a state ballot measure that would “limit government interference with abortion.”
In 2023, DeSantis signed the “Heartbeat Protection Act” that prohibits abortions after six weeks unless the woman has been a victim of rape, incest, human trafficking, or has a health condition.
The FPF put out a television ad titled “Caroline” that promoted Amendment 4. In the ad, a woman named Caroline claimed that after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, doctors refused to give her treatment because she was 20 weeks pregnant, which prevented her from getting an abortion.
Amendment 4, which didn’t pass, would have allowed women to get an abortion after 20 weeks. The proposal received 57 percent of the vote, which was below the 60 percent required to pass.
The Florida Health Department said the ad was “categorically false” because the law states that a woman can have an abortion after six weeks if her life is in danger or to “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
In addition to a multifront effort on behalf of several departments, the state invoked its 2018 “sanitary nuisance” law that penalizes organizations for propagating information that could harm the life or health of a person and warned television stations to remove the ad.
The FPF filed a complaint on Oct. 16 against Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and other state officials requesting injunctive relief.
“FPF fears that the Department will continue its efforts to deter television stations from running FPF advertisements,” the organization said. “FPF will continue to put forth advertisements that educate voters about the lack of meaningful exceptions to Florida’s extreme abortion ban.”
In its request, Waller said he would not support the FPF’s claim that it continues to suffer irreparable harm even after the election and that the plaintiff’s concerns over the need to continue running the ad “appear to be moot.”
What was initially argued to be a need for emergency relief in the days before the election has now been reframed as “the need for broader relief to prevent the State from threatening any pro-Amendment 4 speech it finds harmful,” Waller said, which presents a problem because “this broader claim of imminent irreparable harm is unsupported by the record.”
“Although the record supported a limited temporary restraining order to prevent the Department of Health from unconstitutionally coercing broadcasters to stop airing ‘Caroline’ ahead of election day, Plaintiff has identified no evidence in this record demonstrating that television broadcasters will continue to be unconstitutionally coerced, nor that Plaintiff faces an imminent threat of enforcement action for any other pro-Amendment 4 speech it may engage in after the election.”
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