Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall moves the resolution to oppose Amendment 4. (Image: CCBC)
June 17, 2024 by David Silverberg
Last Tuesday, June 11, Collier County, Fla., officially went on record opposing a woman’s right to choose abortion.
By a unanimous vote the five members of the Board of Commissioners voted to pass a resolution officially rejecting Amendment 4, a constitutional ballot initiative in Florida to guarantee a woman’s right to choose.
As a resolution the county measure does not have the force of law or impose penalties. However, it is an official expression of the county’s collective opinion.
How significant is this resolution both for voters in Collier County and in the efforts to either pass or defeat Amendment 4?
The context: Amendment 4
Titled “Limiting government interference with abortion,” the proposed Amendment 4 states: “Except as provided in Article X, Section 22, no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
When it appears on the ballot it will also note that: “This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
The amendment has been approved to appear on state ballots in the November election. If it passes by at least 60 percent of the voters, abortion will be legal in Florida. Currently, no abortion can be performed after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Collier County resolution
The county resolution, formally titled “A resolution of the Board of Commissioners of Collier County, Florida, in opposition to Amendment 4, a proposed constitutional amendment concerning abortion,” simply concludes that the Board of Commissioners “expresses its strong opposition to Amendment 4.”
It’s in the preceding paragraphs, known as the establishing clauses that start with “whereas,” that the resolution lays out its thinking and justifications. (The full, final, engrossed resolution can be read at the conclusion of this article.)
Rather than opinions, the resolution falsely asserts that Amendment 4 will put abortions in the hands of unqualified personnel, that it will end parental notification, and that it will allow late term abortions. The third paragraph states that Amendment 4 would establish a constitutional right to abortion.
The next paragraph starts with a word almost never used in resolutions or formal legislative documents: “I.”
“WHEREAS, I believe that the language of the proposed amendment is vague, deceptive, and overbroad, and would strike already enacted protections instituted by the State of Florida by broadening the definition of healthcare providers to those not medically licensed, eliminating parental consent for minors, and allowing the life of the unborn to be taken right up to the moment of birth… .”
It then goes on to state that “the Board believes that the passage of Amendment 4 would be detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Collier County and the State of Florida” and so it opposes it.
The debate and vote
The resolution was introduced by current Board chair, Commissioner Chris Hall (R-District 2). He is the “I believe” in the resolution.
The resolution was put on the county agenda with little to no fanfare or notice. Following public comments for and against it at the meeting the commissioners discussed its merits.
“I simply brought this forward because I believe this Amendment 4 is vague, it’s deceptive and it’s over broad at best,” Hall told the Board when they discussed the resolution. “There’s already a legislative process in place through our Florida legislators and it protects life already. And that’s the process we need to move and keep holy as representatives of the people.”
All the commissioners argued to some degree that they were seeking to “educate” voters with this resolution and were at pains to point out that people could vote any way they wished.
Commissioner Rick LoCastro (R-District 1) pointed out that the resolution was merely an opinion: “This resolution doesn’t change any laws. It merely puts us on record as to our moral compass. I personally do feel that many things at the polls are very ambiguous and very confusing,” he said.
He pointed out that during the discussion “I didn’t hear one person say the word ‘adoption,’ which is also an option for an unwanted pregnancy. He characterized himself as “pro-life,” said that was his “moral compass” and while supporting “a woman’s right to choose, my strong advice would be to choose adoption.”
Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3) said that while he expected Amendment 4 to pass with over 60 percent, “I think this resolution is appropriate that it is our opinion that it is confusing, that it is overbroad, that it shouldn’t be part of the Constitution in the first place, that it is the Florida legislature that should be setting what the rules are dealing with abortion.”
“It’s a slippery slope when you start legislating a woman’s choice,” said Commissioner William McDaniel (R-District 4), meaning that choices have “life-long” consequences.
“My simple statement is: choose life in every opportunity that’s physically possible. Choose life,” he said.
Commissioner Dan Kowal (R-District 5) said that he didn’t know much about Amendment 4 initially but he learned that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody had argued against it in the state Supreme Court and three female Supreme Court justices were confused by the language.
He asked how supporters of Amendment 4 could defend it if they couldn’t understand it.
The danger, he thought, was that “There are people out there who know how to manipulate our uneducated voters.” As he saw it: “This resolution is about educating everyone. Do your homework before you vote.”
Hall revealed that the deceptiveness he was so worried about was largely in the title and the words “limiting government interference,” which might be such an irresistible attraction to some voters that they would vote for it without reading the rest of the resolution.
As he put it: “And so in agreeing with all my colleagues to educate the voters, you can vote however you want to but I want you to be fully educated on what you’re voting on and I don’t want it to be deceptive. I don’t want you to look at it as ‘limit government control’ and think, ‘That’s awesome’ and then limit abortion and then get the results we’ve gotten. So with that I’m going to make a motion to join ourselves in solidarity and approve this resolution that says vote no on Amendment 4.”
Comment: Indoctrination versus education
The commissioners’ discussion of the resolution’s “education” is false and disingenuous.
If they truly wanted to educate voters, the resolution would have simply said: “Collier County encourages voters to study this and all other ballot initiatives carefully,” without taking a position for or against it.
But education was never the point of the resolution.
Nor was all the complaining about Amendment 4’s vagueness, deceptiveness or broadness relevant. These were the arguments that Moody put before the state Supreme Court in April.
In fact, the Supreme Court decided exactly the opposite from what the commissioners contend: the proposal met all the requirements for a constitutional amendment, it dealt with a single subject and its title and summary were sufficiently clear that any voter could understand it.
“In the end, the ballot title and summary fairly inform voters, in clear and unambiguous language, of the chief purpose of the amendment and they are not misleading. The ballot summary’s nearly verbatim recitation of the proposed amendment language is an ‘accurate, objective, and neutral summary of the proposed amendment,’” the justices wrote.
They continued: “Here, there is no lack of candor or accuracy: the ballot language plainly informs voters that the material legal effects of the proposed amendment will be that the government will be unable to enact laws that ‘prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict’ previability abortions or abortions necessary to protect the mother’s health. It is undeniable that those are the main and material legal effects of the proposed amendment.
“[W]e have also recognized ‘that voters may be presumed to have the ability to reason and draw logical conclusions’ from the information they are given.
“We thus presume that voters will have an understanding of the obviously broad sweep of this proposed amendment despite the fact that the ballot summary does not and cannot reveal its every possible ramification or collateral effect,” they stated.
Clearly the Florida Supreme Court has greater confidence in the intelligence, understanding and reasoning of Collier County voters than their Board of Commissioners.
So if the Amendment is actually clear and fairly presented, why pass this resolution?
One was Hall’s fear that the title “Limiting government interference” would prove too irresistible to some voters. However, he need not worry: not every Floridian instinctively salivates at the prospect of “limiting government,” so a stampede to approve the Amendment is unlikely on that basis.
Another obvious point of the resolution was both to put Collier County on the record opposing Amendment 4 and sway voters against it.
Because resolutions (as opposed to ordinances) are expressions of opinion rather than enforceable law, political observers tend to dismiss them as irrelevant. However, they do have some impact in expressing the collective opinion of a legislative body or jurisdiction.
But the Collier resolution doesn’t do this and it doesn’t do it in a most peculiar way: it’s that “I believe” in the third paragraph.
This resolution isn’t an expression of Collier County’s opinion as a whole; it clearly states that it is the expression of one person’s opinion and that one person is Commissioner Chris Hall.
One might have expected that “I believe” to be edited out of the final resolution, but it wasn’t.
So, although endorsed by all the commissioners, technically this resolution really expresses only Hall’s opinion, a commissioner who has openly stated that “there is no separation of church and state.”
Legislatively, it’s a poorly written and edited piece of work. There should never be an “I” in an expression of collective opinion. The “I believe” phrase dilutes its force as a legislative opinion.
Next, far from this resolution being a form of education for voters, it is an attempted form of indoctrination against a woman’s right to choose and a major purpose, of course, was to sway Collier County voters against Amendment 4.
Endorsing Hall’s opinion enabled commissioners to pander and placate their anti-choice constituents, whether the commissioners are truly anti-choice or not. This is especially important for those who are up for election this year: LoCastro, who is running against a write-in candidate; Saunders, who is facing four challengers; and William McDaniel, who faces one. Their fates will be decided in the August 20 Republican primary.
Will the resolution sway Collier County voters come November?
There is no polling or other reliable data to gauge its impact. Voters supporting Amendment 4 are not going to suddenly switch their votes because of this resolution. Voters opposed to abortion will vote against Amendment 4 anyway.
What it may do is possibly manipulate some “uneducated” voters against Amendment 4, although these are not the sort who pay attention to county resolutions. As Kowal put it: “There are people out there who know how to manipulate our uneducated voters”—although he was thinking of very different manipulators.
Most likely, the resolution will be used as a tool by anti-choice activists in the county in their campaign against the amendment. They will cite it to give weight to their anti-choice arguments. What election monitors and election law enforcers have to watch carefully is whether they illegally tell people this resolution requires people to vote against Amendment 4, which, as the commissioners noted, it does not.
This resolution now joins Collier County’s anti-public health and anti-federal ordinances, its termination of fluoridation in its water and all the other measures it has taken on its march backward into an imagined better time.
As for Amendment 4, the available polling indicates that statewide it has the 60 percent support it needs to pass and become part of the Florida Constitution. A Fox News poll released June 7 showed that 69 percent of voters support it and 66 percent of voters also support Amendment 3, legalizing recreational marijuana.
In November, if the election occurs as scheduled and the votes in Florida are accurately and legitimately counted, all indications are that Amendment 4 will be approved and Florida’s women will regain the right to choose—no matter what Collier County commissioners believe.
The full, final, signed and engrossed version of the Collier County anti-Amendment 4 resolution.
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg