Florida court rules minors need parental permission for abortion

The Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that a state law allowing minors to get abortions without parental consent is unconstitutional.

The three-judge panel said that a Florida judicial-waiver law violates parents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process. The ruling was the result of a situation in which a 17-year-old girl sought to undergo an abortion without her parents’ consent. In its decision, the court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as well as the Florida Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion.

“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,” the ruling said. Though Florida does have a law requiring minors to receive parental consent before an abortion, the law maintains that minors may obtain a judicial waiver to bypass parental permission.

READ: Parental consent abortion laws are designed to protect teens

According to The Tampa Bay Times, the 17-year-old girl at the center of the case sought such a waiver because she did not want her father to know about her abortion. Clay County Circuit Judge Angela Cox denied her request on the basis that the minor was not “sufficiently mature” to receive a waiver. The minor’s attorney then appealed that decision, triggering a seven-day time period for the appeals court to make its decision.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also intervened, arguing on behalf of the state that the girl should not be granted permission to abort. “Florida’s process for maturity and best-interest judicial waivers conflicts with the constitutional rights of pregnant minors’ parents,” Uthmeier said.

The appeals court judges agreed with him.

“In addition, the attorney general points to a rich common-law tradition of empowering parents to order their children’s affairs, even over their children’s objections, and argues that this rich historical tradition informs proper interpretation of the parental rights that (part of the Florida Constitution) secures,” their opinion said. “Indeed, the Florida Supreme Court has made clear that our state Constitution offers more protection for parental rights than does the federal Constitution.”

The judges agreed that the girl lacked the “requisite maturity” required to make such a life-altering decision as abortion, noting that she lacked “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.”