The Florida Supreme Court tore a page from the Florida Constitution and flung it in the faces of the people Monday by effectively banning abortion in Florida. Six of the seven justices said the word “privacy” does not mean what most people sensibly assume it does.

The 6-1 decision to ban abortions, the most radical act yet of this reactionary court’s contempt for precedents it dislikes, says in effect that the people didn’t know abortion would be affected when they approved Florida’s landmark 1980 privacy amendment to the state Constitution.

That provision guarantees — or did until Monday — that “every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life except as provided herein…”

Ultimate judicial activism

That outcome is no less disgusting for its inevitability since DeSantis began packing the court with candidates curated for their ideologies, first by a nominating commission that DeSantis commands, secondly by a secret cadre of advisers led by a leading abortion opponent, the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, and finally by DeSantis himself.

It was the ultimate in judicial activism, a trait DeSantis and his justices all claim to abhor. Moreover, the majority opinion also focused on what it imagined were the intentions of those who supported the 1980 privacy amendment rather than on the plain and logical meaning of the text.

Whatever happened to textualism?

The decision also contradicted the unmistakable opinion of a majority of voters who rejected the Legislature’s 2012 attempt to do what the court finally did this week. That failed amendment would have barred public funds for abortion and held that the privacy clause could not be used to provide broader privacy rights than those in the U.S. Constitution.