Florida appeals court strikes down law letting minors get an abortion without parents’ consent

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida appeals court ruled Wednesday that a state law that allows minors to get an abortion without their parents’ consent is unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth District Court of Appeal found that the state’s judicial waiver law violates parents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process, citing the state’s parental rights laws, a recent ruling by the Florida Supreme Court and the landmark 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that stripped away federal abortion rights.

“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,” reads the appeals court opinion penned by Judge Jordan Pratt and joined by Judges John MacIver and Brian Lambert.

For years, anti-abortion activists and Republican state lawmakers have worked to unravel minors’ rights to petition a judge to access the procedure in Florida, which bans most abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.

The appeals panel flagged the case as “a question of great public importance” for the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in 2024 that a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion.

The three-judge panel sided with arguments made by state Attorney General James Uthmeier and ruled against a 17-year-old girl who is nearly six weeks pregnant and seeking an abortion without the knowledge or consent of her father.

The appeals court affirmed a lower court ruling that the girl, who is only identified as Jane Doe, lacks the “requisite maturity” to make the decision without a parent or legal guardian involved.

The opinion said the decision was based on her lack of “emotional development and stability, her credibility and demeanor as a witness, her ability to accept responsibility, and her ability to assess the immediate and long-range consequences of her choices.”

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.