Florida voters will take control away from the Republican-controlled state government and decide the fate of recreational marijuana and abortion limitations. The Florida Supreme Court approved two constitutional amendments for the November ballot.
Recreational Amendment
By Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
A divided Florida Supreme Court on Monday approved placing on the November ballot a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at allowing recreational use of marijuana.
- Trulieve, the state’s largest medical marijuana company, has spent more than $40 million on the effort to get the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.
Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office urged the court to reject the measure, arguing it would be misleading to voters and was not limited to a single subject as required by Florida law.
But the 5-2 decision, authored by Justice Jamie Grosshans, found that the proposal met the requirements under the court’s limited review.
“Our role is narrow — we assess only whether the amendment conforms to the constitutionally mandated single-subject requirement, whether the ballot summary meets the statutory standard for clarity, and whether the amendment is facially invalid under the federal Constitution. In light of those limited considerations, we approve the proposed amendment for placement on the ballot,” Grosshans wrote.
Abortion Limitations
By Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday rejected decades of legal precedents and upheld a law that will lead to preventing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — but also cleared the way for voters to decide in November whether they want to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.
- The court issued two bombshell opinions that will dramatically restrict abortion in the coming months, while setting the stage for a fierce political fight in November.
In a 6-1 decision, justices ruled that a privacy clause in the state Constitution does not protect abortion rights. That overturned legal precedents dating to 1989 and effectively gave the go-ahead to a six-week abortion limit that the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved last year.
In a 4-3 decision, justices approved the wording of a proposed constitutional amendment that abortion-rights supporters hope to pass in November. That proposal says, in part: “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 isn’t happy. His press secretary posted on X:
“We agree with the three women on the Court who got it right in dissent. This amendment is misleading and will confuse voters. The language hides the amendment’s true purpose of mandating that abortions be permitted up to the time of birth.”
Neither is Attorney General Ashley Moody:
@AGAshleyMoody: We appreciate the court revisiting its precedent on Florida’s right to privacy and returning the meaning of that amendment to the voters’ original intention. That decision outlines the difficulties and divisiveness of allowing vague and misleading initiatives on the ballot. We have argued from the beginning that these two new constitutional initiatives will mislead voters. We maintain that it will be an uphill battle to educate them. However, we respect the court’s decisions.
However, the League of Women Voters is:
Today, the Florida Supreme Court has granted final approval regarding the wording of a citizen-led ballot initiative entitled “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.” This approval ensures that the initiative will be placed in front of Florida voters as Amendment 4 in the 2024 general election. The amendment requires 60% of favorable support to pass. The League of Women Voters of Florida celebrates this approval and is committed to doing everything possible to see the initiative succeed.
And the ACLU:
Today, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s proposed amendment to limit government interference with abortion meets the requirements for placement on the November 2024 ballot.
The decision comes as the Court reverses long-standing abortion protections and enables a near-total abortion ban to go into effect next month. For the past several years, politicians have sought to impose extremist measures that burden access to abortion care in the state. These assaults have led to multiple tragedies as patients are unable to receive needed care after the arbitrary deadline.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, the national ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and others filed a lawsuit against the previous 15-week ban which the Court has upheld, prompting the six-week ban to take effect next month.
By approving this amendment for the 2024 ballot, the Florida Supreme Court has supported Floridians’ constitutional right to vote for limiting government interference with abortion.
You may be right. I hope not. That’s not what happened in Ohio, for instance. But Florida isn’t the Midwest, and on the other hand it’s not like the GOP has played all its cards in Ohio yet.
Hovering above it all is our Pseudo-Supreme Fake Court to come in for the assist where the fascist, fake-Christian republican authoritarians have failed at a state level.
I share your fatalism in that there are far too few people willing to speak up and say the truth publicly even when they know what is happening is a great evil.
They’ve got jobs to keep, they’ve got kids to support, they’ve got Christian nationalists in their poker game.
On the wealthy side, nobody gonna upset that apple cart to stop that flow of that money.
On the hurting side, there aren’t many who are gonna do anything that can make the circumstances worse for their families. Who can blame them?
The reason John Lewis is the god-like hero he is: not many human beings have the integrity coupled with the fortitude to do that.
People want to believe they can chip away at the edges, slide in a comment here or there, talk to their friends in the background, and wish the whole nightmare away, while they continue to send republicans to the state legislature and cave to the gross inadequacy of our paper and shell men who represent us in DC.
It doesn’t work like that. Unless and until good people on all sides of the aisle are willing to get down in the trenches publicly for what’s right–not letting women die who need abortions for health reasons, for example–then you’re right, this state is doomed. I’m still holding hope that even though the Florida Supreme Court fell down in the ultimate act of judicial splitting the baby (man that was one for the record books),the voters could still turn to be the winning good guys in this state. Not willing to give up on that possibility yet.
Call me cynical, but I’ve seen this movie before.
Voters will pass the constitutional amendments, republicans in state government will twist, bend, crack, and break every possible rule of law to ignore the obvious intent of the people.
Because Florida republicans do not believe in democracy or the will of the people.
See Fair Districts, Voting Rights Restoration, preemption laws, et. al.
Up next: special session for a stay on the 6-week ban?
It’s hard to be happy watching them paint themselves right into the corner they so deserve to be in, when that 6 week ban will rip rights away from so many women and girls who desperately need them. :(
But man, the people who have been engineering this inhumane nightmare deserve a force feeding of their own political crap sandwich and so much more.