Proposal 22, which would have significantly scaled back Floridians’ right to privacy in the state constitution, ultimately died today in the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (CRC).
A motion to bring the proposal to the commission floor despite its rejection by a Committee, ended with the sponsor ultimately withdrawing the proposal from further consideration, and thus it cannot be revived again.
Responding to these developments, ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon stated:
“The broad Florida constitutional right to privacy is still safe – perhaps for 20 years, until the next Constitution Revision Commission.
Proposal 22 sought to undermine Floridians’ constitutional right to privacy, and we are pleased that last-minute parliamentary maneuvers to bring it back after it failed in committee ultimately failed as well.”
“As Commissioner Stemberger’s previous comments about this proposal made clear, Proposal 22 was always about tampering with Floridians’ right of privacy in order to open the door for further legislative restrictions on Florida women’s right to access a safe and legal abortion.
“This attack on reproductive rights would have had broad unintended consequences that would reverberate across many aspects of Floridians’ lives, subjecting many areas of personal life to government intrusion – including our right to make personal medical decisions, end-of life care decisions, decisions about parenting and child-rearing, as well as the growing use of surveillance technology.
“Floridians enjoy a broad protection of privacy under our state Constitution. We are grateful to all the commissioners who stood up for those protections by voting against Proposal 22, and the hundreds of Floridians who took action to protect their own rights. Thanks to their work, Floridians’ right to privacy is no longer under threat from this dangerous and misleading proposal.”
