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Florida appeals court strikes down law letting minors get an abortion without parents' consent
Sun-Sentinel - Gift LinkTALLAHASSEE — Citing parental rights, a Florida appeals court Wednesday ruled that a law that can allow minors to have abortions without their parents’ consent is unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal, backing arguments by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, said the law violates parents’ due-process rights. The ruling came as the appeals court rejected a request by a 17-year-old girl to have an abortion without parental consent.
“It’s difficult to see how the (U.S. Constitution) Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause can countenance a process whose entire function is to deprive presumptively fit parents of the most basic due-process guarantees — notice and opportunity to be heard — on the question whether they must forfeit an important parental right that the state and federal constitutions secure to them,” said the appeals-court opinion, written by Judge Jordan Pratt and joined by Judges Brian Lambert and John MacIver.
The law sets up a process for minors to seek court approval to have abortions without consent from their parents. Judges can grant such parental-consent “waivers” if they find a minor is “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy” or find by “clear and convincing evidence” that the consent requirements “are not in the best interest” of the minor.
While Florida has had parental-notification or parental-consent requirements since 2004, the appeals court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade and a Florida Supreme Court decision in 2024 that said abortion rights were not protected by a privacy right in the state Constitution.
“Whatever asserted constitutional abortion rights may have justified Florida’s judicial-waiver regime in the past unequivocally have been repudiated by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court,” Pratt wrote.
A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal, backing arguments by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, said the law violates parents’ due-process rights. The ruling came as the appeals court rejected a request by a 17-year-old girl to have an abortion without parental consent.
“It’s difficult to see how the (U.S. Constitution) Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause can countenance a process whose entire function is to deprive presumptively fit parents of the most basic due-process guarantees — notice and opportunity to be heard — on the question whether they must forfeit an important parental right that the state and federal constitutions secure to them,” said the appeals-court opinion, written by Judge Jordan Pratt and joined by Judges Brian Lambert and John MacIver.
The law sets up a process for minors to seek court approval to have abortions without consent from their parents. Judges can grant such parental-consent “waivers” if they find a minor is “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy” or find by “clear and convincing evidence” that the consent requirements “are not in the best interest” of the minor.
While Florida has had parental-notification or parental-consent requirements since 2004, the appeals court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade and a Florida Supreme Court decision in 2024 that said abortion rights were not protected by a privacy right in the state Constitution.
“Whatever asserted constitutional abortion rights may have justified Florida’s judicial-waiver regime in the past unequivocally have been repudiated by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court,” Pratt wrote.
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