Legal effort to defeat Amendment 4 is being bankrolled by mystery donor

As the November elections approach, anti-abortion advocates are working to defeat the citizen-led initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

A legal effort to derail Amendment 4 – the citizen led initiative that seeks to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution – is being bankrolled by an “angel financier,” or anonymous donor, according to former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson.

Lawson is representing a group of anti-abortion advocates who claim that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration’s allegations that fraud occurred during the signature gathering process for Amendment 4 means that the initiative failed to obtain the required number of signatures to make the ballot. 

Lawson declined to disclose the name of the donor paying the legal challenge’s fees, or provide other information about them, according to a report published by the Herald/Times.  

The proposed amendment spearheaded by Floridians Protecting Freedom collected 997,035 validated voter signatures. The constitutional threshold to be on the November ballot is roughly 891,000. Applying the percentage of signatures claimed to be invalid by opponents to the count would reduce it to roughly 833,000 signatures, below the necessary threshold. 

DeSantis’ election police

But in September, as the election drew nearer, Florida voters who signed the petition found themselves face to face with police officers who visited them at home, claiming to be investigating possible petition fraud. 

The investigation led by the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) – which was created in 2022 by DeSantis and funded to the tune of $1.4 million – sought to inspect thousands of already validated signatures after the governor’s deputy secretary of state asked supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, and Osceola counties to investigate nearly 36,000 signatures that were already deemed valid earlier in the year in order to find petition fraud.

“This is nothing more than trickery by extreme politicians who fear the will of the people,” Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, said at the time, noting that Secretary of State Cord Byrd had already certified the amendment to appear on the ballot.  

RELATED: Lawyer resigns after DeSantis’ office pressured him to send threatening letter to TV stations over Amendment 4 ad

Since the deadline in state law to challenge the validity of amendment signatures has long since passed, attorney Barry Richard, who offered legal advice to proponents of Amendment 4 during the initiative’s early stages, told the Herald/Times he believes it could be difficult for Lawson to convince a court to toss out the amendment.

‘Unconstitutional coercion’

Other attempts by the DeSantis administration to kill Amendment 4 include the threat of criminal prosecution against TV stations airing a pro-Amendment 4 ad, a move that was promptly rebuked by Chief US District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida. 

Judge Walker sided with Floridians Protecting Freedom, ruling the DeSantis administration’s threats to the TV stations amount to “unconstitutional coercion and viewpoint discrimination.” 

DeSantis’ administration also launched a taxpayer-funded website run by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration that claims that Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety,” even though it would merely restore the previous standard of Roe v. Wade, which required abortion to be legal until fetal viability, which is usually around 24 weeks (or when necessary after that to protect a patient’s health, as determined by their healthcare provider).

The attempts by the DeSantis administration to derail the grassroots initiative have continued to escalate as Florida voters appear to be in favor of the passage of Amendment 4 in November.

According to a survey released in October from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, 60% of those polled said they would vote for Amendment 4. The proposal needs 60% of the vote to pass. 

“A lot of the polling data suggests that most Floridians are vehemently opposed to the six-week ban, at minimum,” Geeta Minocha, an attorney and pro-choice activist from Ocala, Florida, told Floricua, “I’m seeing a lot of misinformation campaigns from folks on the opposite side. And that makes me think, you know what? Actually, we’re winning this fight after all.”

RELATED: Just the facts: What you need to know about Florida’s Amendment 4