Stem cell ballot wording OK'd

Rival stem cell measures with enough signatures can go before voters.

Published: Friday, June 1, 2007 at 3:10 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 1, 2007 at 12:00 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE -- Voters moved a step closer Thursday to being able to choose between requiring the state to spend money on embryonic stem cell research or preventing the state's money from being used for such studies.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled that competing proposals to change the constitution to deal with the issue can go before the electorate in 2008 if the groups pushing the proposals get enough signatures to get them on the ballot.

The court said unanimously that the proposed ballot language that voters would be asked to decide on in both cases is clear enough, and only deals with one subject, as required by law.

The competing groups still have a long way to go in turning in and getting verification of more than 610,000 signatures for each proposal before they would be placed on the November 2008 ballot.

The court only determines whether the ballot language relates to just one subject as required by law, and whether the initiative titles and summaries are clear and unambiguous. It does not rule on the merits of the proposal itself. In both cases, the justices said the ballot proposals are clear enough to allow voters to understand the likely consequences of what they are voting on.

One amendment, sponsored by Floridians for Stem Cell Research and Cures Inc., would require the state Legislature to appropriate $20 million a year for 10 years on grants for embryonic stem cell research. There would be a prohibition on using the embryos for reproductive cloning -- that is, to make a baby. And they could be used only if donors had consented and had not been paid to provide the embryos, other than to compensate them for what it costs to actually donate the cells, under the proposal.

The grants would have to go to nonprofit academic and other research institutions in Florida and the winners of the grant money would be chosen based on a peer review process. All of that is included in the proposed amendment.

The amendment to ban state spending on embryonic stem cell research, sponsored by Citizens for Science and Ethics, Inc., is so simple and short that no one argued against it when the Supreme Court held arguments on whether the ballot language was fair.

The proposed change simply reads: "No revenue of the state shall be spent on experimentation that involves the destruction of a live human embryo."

Backers of embryonic stem cell research say it could hold the key to curing dozens of diseases. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research say it so far has not led to any cures, and it involves destroying a human embryo, which many people oppose on moral grounds.

The research is legal, but federal funding for it has been limited by a White House ban on spending on studies involving new embryonic stem cells, leaving private and state money as the only funding for the studies.

Currently, Florida does not spend any state money on embryonic stem cell research, although the issue has been debated vigorously in the Legislature in recent years.

Although it is unlikely, there is the possibility that voters could somehow pass both, thus requiring the state to spend money on the studies while simultaneously preventing it from spending money on such studies.

Nothing in the constitution or the law addresses what would happen in such a case, meaning it would have to be decided in the courts.

"There is no rule in the constitution with respect to that scenario," said Mark Herron, who practices elections law in Florida.

He said ultimately, it would likely be decided by the Supreme Court if it did.

Henry Handler, a lawyer for the group pushing the amendment that would require spending on embryonic stem cell research, said he doubts that both would pass.

This story appeared in print on page BCE9


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