A federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing an ad supporting Florida’s Right to an Abortion Amendment.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida

The DeSantis administration tried to stop stations from airing a campaign ad by the group Floridians Protecting Freedom promoting a ballot measure looking to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.

In the 30-second ad, a brain cancer survivor named Caroline says the state law would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion.

“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she said in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortions, even in cases like mine.”

The state health department said the ad’s claims are “false” and “dangerous” to the public health.

John Wilson, the health department’s general counsel, sent cease-and-desist letters to multiple television stations. Floridians Protecting Freedom then filed a lawsuit against Wilson and the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, saying the threats amounted to “unconstitutional coercion and viewpoint discrimination” and pressed the court to bar the state from following up on threats to sue.

A judge agreed that the health department’s threats were “viewpoint discrimination” and wrote that the group presented “a substantial likelihood of proving an ongoing violation of its First Amendment rights through the threatened direct penalization of its political speech.”

The judge’s order is valid through October 29 and prevents Ladapo from intimidating local stations for airing the Amendment 4 ad.