DeSantis Named Defendant in Defamation Lawsuit Against Abortion Rights Amendment • Florida Phoenix

Abortion advocates trying to overturn votes already cast on an 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, an anti-abortion attorney, added DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody and CFO Jimmy Patronis as defendants in the Amendment 4 lawsuit Tuesday afternoon, just a week before Election Day.

The plaintiffs want the Orange County trial court to void any ballots already cast because Floridians have already begun voting by mail and at early voting sites. Amendment 4, which would repeal a state law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, would need the approval of 60 percent of voters to pass.

Abortion foes are asking the court to remove Amendment 4 from the November ballot

Phoenix has reached out to representatives of DeSantis, Moody and Patronis, but has yet to hear back.

Lawson represents four women from St. Lucie and Taylor counties who say the amendment didn’t get enough signatures to get on the Nov. 5 ballot. Their claims of petition fraud, which Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the amendment, vehemently denies, come from Preliminary report from October 11 from the state Office of Crime and Election Security.

DeSantis, Moody and Patronis were named based on their roles as members of the state campaign committee, the amended complaint explains. Activists against abortion are also sued Floridians Protecting Freedom and named Secretary of State Cord Byrd and 21 statewide election supervisors as defendants.

According to the amended complaint, the plaintiffs do not allege wrongdoing by DeSantis or any of the state officials.

“State defendants are named in this action solely on the basis of their respective statutory duties and to ensure that the Court has jurisdiction to grant the relief sought. Nothing in this complaint should be construed to suggest that any of the state defendants engaged in wrongdoing,” Lawson wrote in the complaint.

DeSantis has several government agencies are deployed oppose amendment 4, i Moody argued unsuccessfully before the state Supreme Court that the amendment’s wording was too vague.

A state report concluded that 16.4 percent of petitions collected by Florida residents to protect freedom were invalid based on a review of 13,445 verified signatures. But local election monitors verified 997,035 signatures for Amendment 4 in January.