The legal effort to force Florida’s abortion amendment off the ballot is being bankrolled by an unnamed donor.

The lawsuits, filed last week by a group of anti-abortion advocates, argue that a report from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration alleging “widespread” fraud in the petition gathering process for Amendment 4 should therefore disqualify any votes for the effort.

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson is representing the four Florida women suing. In the lawsuits, he argues that the sponsors behind Amendment 4 failed to secure the required number of signatures to make the ballot when the reported fraud is considered.

The lawsuit is being funded by an “angel financier,” Lawson told the Times/Herald. He declined to disclose the donor’s name or provide other information about them.

When someone other than the client is paying the attorney’s fees, the legal team is required to meet several conditions under Florida Bar ethical conduct rules, Lawson said. That includes ensuring that the donor does not “direct the attorney’s actions or influence the legal strategy in any way that is contrary to the client’s wishes or interests.”

“We are, of course, following these rules,” Lawson said in a text message to the Herald/Times.

While the donor’s identity remains a mystery, the funds are helping fuel a high-stakes legal challenge that could toss out the amendment even if it passes with 60% voter approval next month. Across the state, hundreds of thousands of Floridians have already cast ballots with Amendment 4 on them.

In states with the citizen-led initiative process, it’s uncommon to remove a constitutional amendment after it’s already on the ballot.

“It’s a pretty extreme remedy,” said Jonathan Marshfield, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Florida.

Part of Lawson’s legal strategy will rely on a 2006 court ruling on another amendment effort. In that case, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that an election doesn’t cure or nullify any fraud used to get an amendment on the ballot.

Lawson filed nearly identical lawsuits in roughly two dozen Florida counties. He said he plans to move forward with one case and try to pause the others. The case could escalate to a district court of appeal and likely the Florida Supreme Court.

Some legal experts think it could be difficult for Lawson and the anti-abortion plaintiffs to convince a court to toss out the amendment.

Barry Richard, an attorney who offered legal advice to Amendment 4 early in its inception, said he thinks there’s a fundamental problem with leaning on the state’s report.

The report reviewed over 13,000 of the nearly 1 million validated petitions statewide. From that, it extrapolated that about 16.4% of all Amendment 4 petitions should never have been accepted.

When state election supervisors validate petitions, they are barred from using random sampling to verify signatures and get an initiative on the ballot, Richard noted.

“It seems to me the court is not going to permit it the other way, that you can use a representative sampling to get it off the ballot,” Richard said.

Richard said he can’t see a court asking county elections offices to reexamine every signature.

“It would open a can of worms I don’t think the court would want to open,” Richard said.

Marshfield said that while the 2006 case does say that an election doesn’t cure fraud, the Florida Supreme Court has largely avoided weighing in.

Instead, the state’s high court has asked lower trial courts to figure out whether the fraud was substantive or not, a process that could take months.

But Marshfield said filing before the election, even if the issue won’t be resolved before then, gives the challengers more credibility. In previous instances, courts have taken issue with groups who challenge an issue based on fraud only after they get an outcome they didn’t like.

Concerns about election integrity resonate with conservatives, said Mary Ziegler, an expert on reproductive and abortion law at UC Davis, and Florida’s high court is one of the most conservative in the nation. She said the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that fraud allegations can be compelling to act on even when evidence may be slightly thin.

But the timing of the state’s report and the legal challenge could also affect how a court makes its decision, she said. Early this year, Secretary of State Cord Byrd certified the amendment to appear on the ballot, and the deadline in state law to challenge the validity of amendment signatures has long since passed.

Ziegler said the idea that Florida judges wouldn’t at all consider how it would look for them to nullify an amendment that passed the popular vote “seems ridiculous.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2024, 7:00 AM.