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- Title
WATERGATE, WIRETAPPING, AND WIRE TRANSFERS: THE TRUE ORIGIN OF FLORIDA’S PRIVACY RIGHT.
- Authors
STEMBERGER, JOHN; PHILLIPS, JACOB
- Abstract
The United States Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has significantly increased the importance of the intersection between state constitutional law and potential abortion rights. Because restrictions on abortion no longer violate federal constitutional rights under this precedent, the analysis now turns to state constitutional rights. In 1989, the Florida Supreme Court found that Florida’s independent freestanding privacy right included an expansive right to an abortion while invalidating a parental consent statute. Following the Dobbs decision, however, the Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy. As of this writing, this law is being litigated in Florida courts. The Florida Supreme Court has made clear that the meaning of the Florida Constitution’s text turns in significant part on how voters would have understood its meaning when proposed as a potential amendment. Lacking from public commentary—and from In Re: TW—is any sociohistorical analysis of the cultural context precipitating the ballot initiative that became the Florida constitutional privacy guarantee. The aim of this article is to identify and address the historical record leading up to drafting and proposing the explicit constitutional privacy right—a record which demonstrates that the origin of the amendment springs directly from concerns over informational privacy in the mid-1970s, exemplified by, inter alia, Watergate, wiretapping, and wire transfers. Further, this historical record is consistent with the ordinary public meaning of the text of the amendment as adopted by Floridians in 1980, which was intended to protect against the discovery and dissemination of private facts—to guarantee the “right to be let alone” as conceptualized by Justice Brandeis.
- Subjects
ACTIONS &; defenses (Law); CIVIL rights; RIGHT of privacy; WOMEN'S health; ABORTION policy
- Publication
Cumberland Law Review, 2023, Vol 53, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0360-8298
- Publication type
Article