First Amendment

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 10.18.2024 10:00 AM

Floridians this fall will vote on a constitutional "Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion." So authorities decided to interfere with free speech in an attempt to thwart voters from limiting the government's right to interfere in reproductive decisions. The state threatened TV stations with criminal penalties for running an ad supporting the abortion initiative (known as Amendment 4).

A federal judge isn't impressed. "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid," wrote U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in an October 17 opinion.

Walker temporarily enjoined Florida from attempting to censor the ad, granting the temporary restraining order request sought by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group sponsoring Amendment 4.

"Importantly, this is a temporary restraining order, which is not generally appealable," noted legal writer Chris Gender, author of the Law Dork newsletter, on BlueSky. "The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Oct.. 29, and the state could appeal from that."

Florida has been pulling out all the stops to try and stop Amendment 4 from passing. The state has been using taxpayer money to run ads in opposition to the amendment while trying to prohibit people from seeing an ad in support of it.

The ad in question is "political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment," notes Judge Walker. "And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring........

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