Walter Olson
Walter Olson
The Florida Department of Health has sent a letter to Gainesville television station WCJB demanding that it cease airing a campaign ad in support of Amendment 4, a ballot initiative that would liberalize the state’s abortion law.
In the ad, “Caroline” from Tampa states that undergoing an abortion was necessary to save her life and that “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.” The state health department claims that this is an incorrect statement about the current state of Florida law, that the error might cause some women not to seek needed medical treatment in Florida, and that as a result running the ad violates Florida Statutes section 386.01, under which “the commission of any act, by an individual, municipality, organization, or corporation … by which the health or life of an individual, or the health or lives of individuals, may be threatened or impaired” constitutes a ‘sanitary nuisance.’ ”
Under Florida law, the letter says, anyone who refuses to abate a sanitary nuisance on demand—in this case by taking the ad off the air—violates criminal law and is also subject to an injunction. Anticipating the objection that the First Amendment (and the parallel clause of the Florida constitution) covers campaign speech and this ad in particular, the Florida health department adds that such a right of speech “does not include free rein to disseminate false advertisements which, if believed, would likely have a detrimental effect on the lives and health of pregnant women in Florida.”
It seems hard to believe that either the federal or state courts would uphold the Florida Department of Health’s assertion here of an extraordinarily broad censorship power over speech about controversial public health matters, “sanitary nuisance” or otherwise.
To begin with, contemporary Supreme Court jurisprudence makes it clear that the First Amendment protects a wide range of untruths in public discourse. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/florida-moves-ban-campaign-ad-sanitary-nuisance