Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is spending the runup to the election on a mission to defeat ballot initiatives that would legalize recreational marijuana and restore reproductive freedom in the Sunshine State. The failed presidential candidate has invested significant political capital and tens of millions of dollars of state funds on this quest. He’s also enlisted the heads of state agencies to publicly oppose the amendments.
Critics describe DeSantis’ efforts to oppose the amendments as unprecedented and illegal. Some are deeply troubled by state agency heads joining DeSantis on the bully pulpit and doing interviews with conservative media about political issues.
Florida law prohibits a state employee from using “his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election.” The law also prohibits officials from using taxpayer funds to influence political outcomes. This is meant to prevent them from using the power of their office to alter the result of an election.
“What we have seen is unprecedented levels of government interference. Attempts to mislead voters have ramped up beyond anything that most of us have ever seen,” Keisha Mulfort, senior communications strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Daily Dot. The ACLU has taken the state to court over its efforts to defeat the abortion initiative.
Florida’s current abortion law
Florida’s white, male, Republican-dominated legislature wasted no time curbing abortion access after Roe v. Wade fell, banning abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, or that jeopardize the health of the mother.
Last year, it replaced that 15-week ban with a six-week ban, before many women know they are pregnant. Under this law, anyone who performs or participates in an abortion can be jailed for five years and fined up to $5,000. Lawmakers have claimed that women won’t be arrested, a claim critics say is clearly contradicted by the plain language of the law, as a woman terminating a pregnancy obviously participates in an abortion.
Nearly a million Floridians reacted by by signing a ballot initiative to restore abortion rights to what they were under Roe, when the procedure was legal up until viability, much like the standard that existed under the common law for centuries before men started restricting it in the mid-1800s.
To make it on the ballot, Amendment 4 narrowly survived a legal challenge at the state Supreme Court, a majority of whom DeSantis appointed.
Tomorrow, Floridians will decide whether abortion will once again be widely available in the state. Constitutional amendments need 60% of the vote to pass.
DeSantis strikes back
DeSantis has thrown everything he has at defeating both Amendment 4 and Amendment 3, which would legalize recreational marijuana for adults aged 21 and up. (Medical marijuana was legalized by a ballot initiative in 2016.)
It’s widely believed that his administration was behind state police showing up at the homes of people who signed Amendment 4’s ballot initiative even after their signatures were validated and the deadline for challenging them had passed. DeSantis is also blamed for the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) creating a controversial website that supposedly tells the “truth” about Amendment 4, which reproductive rights advocates describe as filled with lies, mistruths, and propaganda.
DeSantis has dumped an estimated $50 million of taxpayer funds into television commercials to oppose Amendment 3. A confidential source provided the Daily Dot with a spreadsheet showing that over 13,000 spots aired in the roughly six-week period from Sept. 12 to Oct. 23 alone, effectively blanketing the state with ads called “protect your kids,” “unlike alcohol,” “teens future,” and “every choice.” Last week, Forbes reported that his administration is using millions of dollars of opioid settlement money on anti-Amendment 3 ads.
Mulfort of the ACLU described the ad buys thusly, “They’re whipping us with our money and telling us to enjoy it.”
The ad buys earned DeSantis a rare bipartisan rebuke.
“No matter where you stand on this issue, this is still a democracy. We do not spend taxpayer dollars in advance of a political issue,” said state Sen. Joe Gruters (R) at an Oct. 25 press conference. Gruters, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and an opponent of Amendment 4, added, “I fully believe that this is undemocratic and a violation of Florida laws to spend taxpayer funds on political ads. Period.”
Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU joined forces to sue the state over AHCA’s website and advertisements, which they described as an “unconstitutional misinformation campaign.” A judge disagreed.
In another case, state Sen. Jason Pizzo (D) sued the Florida Department of Transportation for allegedly inappropriately using state funds to oppose the marijuana amendment. The court dismissed the case.
Daniel Marshall, an attorney with Southern Legal Counsel, is among those who believe the governor is driving the state’s efforts to oppose these amendments.
“Clearly this is coming from the top, and it’s kind of shocking,” he told the Daily Dot.
Perhaps most controversially, Florida threatened criminal prosecution for TV stations who aired ads in support of abortion rights, leading a federal judge to grant an injunction against the state in a scathing opinion that included this unforgettable line, “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
Governor enlists agency heads
DeSantis has been on a nonstop speaking tour around the state to oppose the amendments in recent weeks. He’s often accompanied by doctors who oppose reproductive rights, law enforcement, and state employees. Last week, he was joined by AHCA Secretary Jason Weida and Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Shevaun Harris.
During his speech, DeSantis took aim at doctors, alleging that Florida law provides sufficient exceptions for women who are pregnant as a result of rape, incest, or whose lives are in jeopardy to terminate their pregnancies. He said any doctor who refuses to perform an abortion in these circumstances should “be sued to high heaven for malpractice.” He also inaccurately suggested that a minor could simply terminate a pregnancy in the eighth month, one of conservatives’ favorite lies to tell about abortion. In reality, the law of the land has long been that this is only legal if the mother’s life is in jeopardy or in the case of fatal fetal abnormality.
And he has repeatedly suggested that women and girls are not being denied abortions until their health or life are in jeopardy, which is simply untrue. Due to the state’s abortion law, last year, Floridian Deborah Dorbert had no choice but to carry a baby to term who had no kidneys and would not survive outside the womb, putting herself at risk of a potentially deadly complication and forcing her into the unthinkable situation of delivering her son then immediately watching him die.
Mulfort recalled that her pregnancy was so high risk that the doctors were just waiting for her to miscarry. Her daughter ultimately survived.
“I was one of the lucky ones. I very well could have been Deborah. Or I very well could have had to, I could have been one of my close friends who had to deliver a stillborn baby,” she said. “These things are real. These things are actually happening.”
Both Marshall and Mulfort pointed to comments like the governor claiming no women are being denied abortions even when their lives are in jeopardy, or if they survived rape, as examples of the deceptive and misleading statements by DeSantis and other Amendment 4 opponents. Statistics show that rape is the most underreported crime; a majority of survivors do not report it to the police. Survivors may not want to get the courts involved due to perceptions of stigma, feelings of shame, or perhaps their immigration status or criminal record.
In Republican controlled Florida, this may leave them with no choice but to carry their rapist’s baby.
And doctors who do perform abortions after the six-week ban do so knowing that they could be fined and thrown in prison if a court or jury decides that one of the exceptions didn’t apply.
“They’re really putting the doctors in a completely, just a no-win situation,” Marshall said.
In his remarks at the event last week, Weida from AHCA claimed that Amendment 4 is supported by “[George] Soros-backed activist and advocacy groups,” referring to the Jewish billionaire whom conservatives blame for essentially any policy they don’t like.
Weida also took a decidedly paternalistic position about Florida’s restrictive abortion laws. “The Florida Legislature has laws in place to protect women, and the one thing I want to leave you with right now is that women would be unsafe if Amendment 4 were to pass,” he said.
In reality, giving birth is significantly more dangerous than getting an abortion. A 2012 study found that women were 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth than from complications from an abortion.
Mulfort takes exception to the state interfering in women’s reproductive healthcare choices.
“When women have children, they do not go to their governor, they do not go to their senator, they do not go to the attorney general, they do not go to their elected officials for permission, and that is what he’s seeking,” she said.
When she spoke last week, Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Harris equated parents having the right to require their daughters to carry unwanted pregnancies to term with parental consent requirements for a teen to get acne medication or open a bank account.
“There’s nothing more precious than life, and at the department, our mission is focused on protecting children at all stages of life,” Harris said.
As head of the state DCF, Harris’ presence at the event was arguably of particular note, given that outlawing or significantly restricting abortion has been found to increase the number of children under DCF’s care.
Neither AHCA nor DCF responded to questions about whether DeSantis’ administration asked Harris and Weida to speak out against abortion, if they took leave from work to speak at the event, or commented on allegations that their actions were illegal.
A confidential source said that DeSantis has asked other agency heads to publicly speak out against these amendments, such as by doing interviews on conservative talk radio shows.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
While some may take issue with state employees falling in line at the governor’s behest, others point out that DeSantis removed two duly elected prosecutors simply because he didn’t like their policies. And not everyone has the luxury of quitting their job in protest, like the attorney for the Florida Department of Health who abruptly resigned last month after the state threatened to prosecute television stations for airing pro-Amendment 4 ads.
The sum total of DeSantis’ efforts to defeat Amendments 3 and 4 have left Mulfort with the impression that he feels like he’s above the law.
“In a democracy, we get one voice and one vote, and that voice of these agencies should not be the quote, unquote, king of Florida,” she said. “That’s not what we elected. That’s not what Floridians elected Ron DeSantis to do.”
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