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Florida Attorney General's office takes aim at Florida privacy clause in abortion fight
Tampa Bay TimesNo Paywall
TALLAHASSEE — Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office said late Tuesday that it thinks the Florida Supreme Court should reverse a decades-old position that a privacy clause in the state Constitution protects abortion rights.
Lawyers in Moody’s office addressed the issue in a 44-page document arguing that the Supreme Court should reject an effort by abortion clinics and a doctor to block a new law that makes abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy illegal.
The privacy clause has played a crucial role in bolstering abortion rights in Florida since a 1989 Supreme Court ruling. Abortion opponents have long argued that the clause was not meant to protect abortion rights — a position that Moody’s office took in Tuesday’s filing.
The filing said the 1989 decision, in a case known as In re: T.W., was wrong “from the start.”
“It ignored that the (constitutional) provision’s plain text says nothing of abortion, that its drafters publicly disavowed guaranteeing abortion rights and that the provision was ratified in response to decisions restricting informational privacy,” said the document, filed by state Solicitor General Henry Whitaker and other lawyers in Moody’s office. “Were this (Supreme) Court to address the meaning of the Privacy Clause here, it should therefore recede from its precedents and clarify that the original meaning of the clause has nothing to say about abortion— and certainly that the Privacy Clause is not so clear as to pry the abortion debate from the hands of voters.”
At another point in the document, Moody’s office expressed confidence that the court “is likely to hold that the Privacy Clause of the Florida Constitution does not limit the Legislature from regulating abortion.”
Such a ruling would be a seismic legal shift about abortion rights in Florida and would come after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Lawyers in Moody’s office addressed the issue in a 44-page document arguing that the Supreme Court should reject an effort by abortion clinics and a doctor to block a new law that makes abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy illegal.
The privacy clause has played a crucial role in bolstering abortion rights in Florida since a 1989 Supreme Court ruling. Abortion opponents have long argued that the clause was not meant to protect abortion rights — a position that Moody’s office took in Tuesday’s filing.
The filing said the 1989 decision, in a case known as In re: T.W., was wrong “from the start.”
“It ignored that the (constitutional) provision’s plain text says nothing of abortion, that its drafters publicly disavowed guaranteeing abortion rights and that the provision was ratified in response to decisions restricting informational privacy,” said the document, filed by state Solicitor General Henry Whitaker and other lawyers in Moody’s office. “Were this (Supreme) Court to address the meaning of the Privacy Clause here, it should therefore recede from its precedents and clarify that the original meaning of the clause has nothing to say about abortion— and certainly that the Privacy Clause is not so clear as to pry the abortion debate from the hands of voters.”
At another point in the document, Moody’s office expressed confidence that the court “is likely to hold that the Privacy Clause of the Florida Constitution does not limit the Legislature from regulating abortion.”
Such a ruling would be a seismic legal shift about abortion rights in Florida and would come after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
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