(C) Florida Phoenix
This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



DeSantis named as defendant in suit to discredit abortion-rights amendment • Florida Phoenix [1]

['Jackie Llanos', 'Mitch Perry', 'Jay Waagmeester', 'Michael Lyle', 'More From Author', '- October', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline']

Date: 2024-10-30

The anti-abortion advocates suing to throw out votes already cast for the amendment that would protect abortion access in Florida are now suing Gov. Ron DeSantis and other top leaders.

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson, attorney for the abortion foes, added DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis as defendants in the suit against Amendment 4 on Tuesday afternoon, just a week before Election Day.

The plaintiffs want a state trial court in Orange County to nullify any votes already cast, since Floridians have already started voting via mail and at early voting locations. Amendment 4, which would undo the state’s law banning most abortions after six weeks’ gestation, needs 60% approval from voters to pass.

The Phoenix has reached out to representatives of DeSantis, Moody, and Patronis but has not heard back yet.

Lawson represents four women from St. Lucie and Taylor counties who claim the amendment didn’t gather enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 5 ballot. Their claim of fraud in the petition-gathering process, which Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the amendment, has vehemently denied, stems from an Oct. 11 preliminary report from the state’s Office of Elections Crime and Security.

DeSantis, Moody, and Patronis were named based on their roles as members of the state Elections Canvassing Commission, an amended complaint explains. The anti-abortion activists are also suing Floridians Protecting Freedom and have named Secretary of State Cord Byrd and 21 supervisors of election across the state as defendants.

The plaintiffs are not accusing DeSantis or any of the state officials of wrongdoing, according to the amended complaint.

“The State Defendants are named in this suit solely based on their respective statutory duties and to ensure the Court has jurisdiction to grant the relief requested. Nothing in this complaint should be interpreted as a suggestion that any of the State Defendants have engaged in wrongdoing,” Lawson wrote in the complaint.

DeSantis has deployed multiple state agencies to advocate against Amendment 4, and Moody unsuccessfully argued in front of the state Supreme Court that the amendment’s ballot language was too vague.

The state’s report concluded that 16.4% of the petitions Floridians Protecting Freedom gathered were invalid based on the review of 13,445 verified signatures. But local supervisors of elections had verified 997,035 signatures for Amendment 4 in January.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/10/30/desantis-named-as-defendant-in-suit-to-discredit-abortion-rights-amendment/

Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.