Recap and analysis of the week in state government and politics
By Ryan Dailey
The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Friday heard arguments in a case that could have major implications for access to abortion in the state.
Justices are weighing a legal challenge to a 2022 law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A ruling in the lawsuit, which could take months, also will affect a law passed this year that would bar abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Much of Friday’s arguments hinged on whether the seven-member court should overturn decades of legal precedent that said a privacy clause in the state Constitution protects abortion rights.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include seven abortion clinics and a doctor who performs abortions.
The law violates “fundamental rights” and subjects women to “serious and unnecessary risks to their health” by forcing them to give birth, plaintiffs’ attorney Whitney Leigh White argued Friday.
Florida’s privacy clause protects “the autonomy of the intimacies of personal identity” and “a physical and psychological zone within which an individual has the right to be free from intrusion or coercion … by government.”
Justices questioned White about whether the privacy clause should apply to abortion.
“Why does it not connote a negative implication? It’s the right to be let alone,” Justice Meredith Sasso asked. “How does that square … with the right to procure something?”
The right to be left alone “and free from government interference into a person’s private life” encompasses “private activities and private decisions,” White, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, said.
“There’s no basis to exclude a decision as deeply personal and private as the decision whether to continue a pregnancy from otherwise broad protections for freedom from interference in private life,” she added.
But Chief Justice Carlos Muniz — who at one point during Friday’s arguments said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision “might have been an abomination” and referred to fetuses as “human beings” — appeared unconvinced.
“You are asking us to essentially take a whole class of human beings and put them outside of the protection of the law essentially, in the sense that if the legislature wants to protect those human beings, they are precluded by the Constitution of Florida from doing that,” he said.
White pushed back, arguing that “there is no other context in which this court has held that the state can constitutionally force an individual to take on increased and serious medical risks and harm for the purported benefit of others.”
State Solicitor General Henry Whitaker said the privacy clause “does not establish a right to abortion” and urged justices to defer to state lawmakers on the issue.
“The plaintiffs have raised substantial concerns about women who need to have abortions, suffer barriers from getting abortions, and other terrible things. The legislature weighed and balanced those concerns against the interest in preserving life. That kind of weighing and balancing is precisely the kind of thing that should be done by the legislature, and not this court,” he said.
NEW MEMBERS FOR ETHICS PANEL
Days before the Florida Commission on Ethics was poised to hold a high-profile meeting, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed two new members to the panel — one of whom is a co-founder of the prominent conservative group Moms for Liberty.
DeSantis on Wednesday named Tina Descovich, a former Brevard County School Board member who helped found Moms for Liberty, and South Florida-based attorney Luis Fuste to the ethics board. Descovich and Fuste, whose appointments went into effect immediately, replaced the board’s former chairman and a member whose term expired.
Descovich said in a statement that she was “honored” to be named to “this important statewide commission.”
“The Florida ethics commission is charged with serving as the guardian of the standards of conduct for public officers and employees as well as safeguarding public trust,” Descovich said.
Democrats quickly seized on DeSantis’ choice of Descovich, with many pointing to her involvement with Moms for Liberty. The group has been a major player in controversies about attempts to remove or review books at schools.
Moms for Liberty has maintained it is trying to prevent children from having access to adult-oriented books and material, but critics have accused the group of book banning.
Jennifer Jenkins, a Brevard County School Board member who appeared with Democratic Party officials in July 2022 during the same weekend as a Moms for Liberty summit in Tampa, criticized Descovich’s appointment to the commission.
“Qualifications include: losing an incumbent school board seat & creating a nationally recognized hate group,” Jenkins said in a tweet Wednesday, referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling Moms for Liberty as an “antigovernment organization.”
Moms for Liberty has disputed that label and threatened legal action against the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The ethics commission appointments ultimately will need approval from the Florida Senate.
LATVALA CASE DROPPED
The state ethics panel on Friday ended a long-running probe into former state Sen. Jack Latvala, who left office amid sexual-harassment allegations.
The commission, in a voice vote, approved a recommendation from state lawyer Elizabeth Miller to dismiss an ethics complaint filed in December 2017. The case involved allegations that Latvala sexually harassed a Senate aide and had a sexual relationship with a lobbyist.
The aide, Rachel Perrin Rogers, and the lobbyist, Laura McLeod, declined to testify, leading Miller to say she had little choice but to seek dismissal.
Commission member Bill Cervone, a former state attorney from the Gainesville area, called Latvala’s behavior “extraordinarily egregious” and unsuccessfully urged the panel to reject dismissal. Such a move could have led to a hearing on the allegations before an administrative law judge.
But Fuste, two days into his term on the commission, said Miller wouldn’t have the “tools” to pursue the case because of the unwillingness of the women to testify.
“It’s not to the extent that justice is not deserving, it’s just the tools necessary to get there are just not available,” Fuste said.
Latvala has denied sexually harassing Perrin Rogers but has acknowledged an affair with McLeod.
STORY OF THE WEEK: In a case that could have a dramatic impact on women’s reproductive rights in the state, the Florida Supreme Court on Friday heard arguments in a legal challenge to a 2022 law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “When they’re ready — right now they’re not — but when they’re ready, we have money set aside to work with them, to help them rebuild a small but very important tourism industry.” — Visit Florida CEO Dana Young, referring to the tourism-marketing agency’s plans to help rural and coastal areas recover from Hurricane Idalia.
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