Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida v. State of Florida & Planned Parenthood of Southwest & Central Florida v. State of Florida, 384 So.3d 67

Background

Florida enacted a 2022 statute (§ 390.0111) banning most abortions after 15 weeks gestation, with narrow medical exceptions; Planned Parenthood clinics and a physician sued to enjoin enforcement.
The trial court granted a temporary injunction, relying on this Court’s prior Privacy Clause abortion decisions (In re T.W. and its progeny) and applied strict scrutiny.
The First District reversed the injunction; the State asked this Court to reconsider the Privacy Clause precedents and (at oral argument) effectively waived standing objections so the Court would reach the merits.
The Florida Supreme Court undertook an original-public-meaning analysis of Article I, § 23 (the Privacy Clause), examining text, contemporaneous dictionaries, the 1980 constitutional revision commission debate, contemporaneous legislation, and media/public debate.
The Court held that the Privacy Clause (as ratified in 1980) did not clearly secure a right to elective abortion, found T.W. and its progeny were wrongly decided, receded from them, and concluded Planned Parenthood was unlikely to prevail on the merits—therefore no entitlement to a temporary injunction.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Florida Constitution’s Privacy Clause protects a right to elective abortion	Privacy Clause encompasses decisional autonomy including abortion (relying on T.W. and federal privacy jurisprudence)	Clause protects privacy/informational interests as publicly understood in 1980; did not encompass abortion	Held: Clause, as ratified in 1980, did not clearly include a right to elective abortion; statute presumed constitutional
Whether In re T.W. (and North Florida Women’s Health, Gainesville Woman Care) remain controlling	T.W. correctly recognized abortion right under § 23 and should control	T.W. relied on Roe and foreign reasoning, failed original-meaning analysis, and improperly displaces legislative authority	Held: T.W. and its progeny are receded from as clearly erroneous and unjustified; Court declines to follow them
Standing / third-party standing to assert patients’ privacy rights	Planned Parenthood has third-party standing to vindicate patients’ rights and established prerequisites for injunctive relief	State challenged standing; Court accepted State’s waiver at oral argument and proceeded to merits	Held: Court assumed standing (State’s concession) and decided merits; concurrence urges future reevaluation of Florida standing doctrine
Whether a temporary injunction was warranted (irreparable harm and likelihood of success)	Plaintiffs showed irreparable harm and substantial likelihood of success on Privacy-Clause claim	Statute presumed constitutional; plaintiffs cannot show likelihood of success if § 23 doesn’t protect abortion	Held: Plaintiffs failed the likelihood-of-success prong; injunction not warranted

Key Cases Cited

In re T.W., 551 So. 2d 1186 (Fla. 1989) (state-court decision previously reading abortion right into Florida’s Privacy Clause)
North Fla. Women’s Health & Counseling Servs., Inc. v. State, 866 So. 2d 612 (Fla. 2003) (reaffirming T.W.)
Gainesville Woman Care, LLC v. State, 210 So. 3d 1243 (Fla. 2017) (applying T.W. framework)
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (U.S. 1973) (landmark federal decision linking abortion to a federal right of privacy)
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (U.S. 1992) (abandoning Roe’s privacy framing in favor of the Fourteenth Amendment due process analysis)
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (U.S. 2022) (overruling Roe and returning abortion regulation to the people and legislatures)
Winfield v. Div. of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, 477 So. 2d 544 (Fla. 1985) (recognizing Florida’s Privacy Clause can extend beyond federal protections)
State v. Poole, 297 So. 3d 487 (Fla. 2020) (stare decisis framework for receding from precedent)