Federal judge blasts DeSantis administration for threats against TV stations

New York
CNN
 — 

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

That’s what a federal judge wrote Thursday as he sided with local TV stations in an extraordinary dispute over a pro-abortion rights television ad.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing the ad.

The controversy stems from a campaign ad by the group Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is behind the “Yes on 4 Campaign,” promoting a ballot measure that seeks to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.

In the 30-second ad, a brain cancer survivor named Caroline says the state law would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion.

“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says on camera. “Florida has now banned abortions, even in cases like mine.”

The state health department – part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration, which has aggressively campaigned against the pro-abortion amendment – said the ad’s claims are “false” and “dangerous” to the public health.

John Wilson, the health department’s general counsel, sent cease-and-desist letters to multiple television stations airing the ad. Floridians Protecting Freedom then filed a lawsuit against Wilson and the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, saying the threats amounted to “unconstitutional coercion and viewpoint discrimination” and pressed the court to bar the state from following up on threats to sue.

On Thursday, the judge agreed the health department’s threats were “viewpoint discrimination” and wrote that the group presented “a substantial likelihood of proving an ongoing violation of its First Amendment rights through the threatened direct penalization of its political speech.”

The judge’s order, which is valid through October 29, effectively bars Ladapo from intimidating local stations for airing the Amendment 4 ad.

Walker’s granting of the restraining order comes less than a week after Wilson resigned from his post. In a letter obtained by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald, Wilson wrote that “a man is nothing without his conscience,” adding that “it has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”

Wilson did not mention the ad controversy.

The state’s health department continues to assert that the abortion rights ad “unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida.” Jae Williams, the department’s communications director, told CNN on Thursday that “the media continues to ignore the truth that Florida’s heartbeat protection law always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest, and human trafficking.”

Some medical experts have said otherwise. “Florida’s extreme abortion ban has created an unworkable legal landscape that endangers both patients and clinicians,” the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights stated in a report last month. The ban “leads to preventable suffering” and “compels clinicians to deviate from established standards of care and medical ethics,” the group said.

The health department’s threats were so chilling that WINK, a CBS affiliate, pulled the ad from its broadcasts, Florida Politics reported. Other stations have continued to air the ad, some as recently as Thursday evening, according to the TVEyes video search service.

The broadcasters were supported by Jessica Rosenworcel, the Democratic chair of the FCC, who said earlier this month that “threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”