Florida’s Department of Health cannot block a TV ad supporting a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, a federal judge ruled Thursday, after the department sent letters to local TV stations ordering them to stop broadcasting of the advertisement, otherwise they risked criminal consequences.

“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech by simply declaring that the unfavorable speech is ‘false,’” U.S. District Judge Mark E Walker wrote in his ruling. “To put it simply for the state of Florida, it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

Florida is one of 10 states that will vote on abortion-related ballot measures in November. If enacted, Florida’s measure would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and reverse a six-week ban on the procedure that took effect in May.

Earlier this month, Florida’s health department sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations with an ad from Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign behind the measure. In the ad, a woman named Caroline speaks about being diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy.

“The doctors knew that if I didn’t end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life and my daughter would lose her mother,” Caroline says in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine.”

The letters said the claim that women in Florida cannot obtain life-saving abortions was “categorically false” since Florida’s ban allows abortions in medical emergencies. “The fact is that these ads are unequivocally false and harmful to Florida’s public health,” Jae Williams, Florida’s director of health communications, said in an email late Thursday.

However, doctors across the country have said the abortion ban is so vaguely worded that it forces them to deny people medically necessary abortions. A New York doctor recently said she treated a woman with an ectopic pregnancy — which is nonviable and potentially life-threatening if left untreated — who had been turned away from a Florida hospital.

In response to the letters, Floridians Protecting Freedom sued Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and John Wilson, the former general counsel of the state health department. At least one TV station stopped airing the ad, the coalition claimed.

On Thursday, Walker issued a temporary restraining order, preventing Ladapo from taking further action against broadcasters or other media outlets that might air Floridians Protecting Freedom ads.

“Of course, Florida’s surgeon general has the right to advocate his own position on a ballot measure,” Walker wrote. “But it would undermine the rule of law if the state were able to translate its own interests into the direct suppression of protected political expressions.”

In recent weeks, the Florida government, led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, has sent law enforcement officials to investigate people who signed a petition to get the measure on the ballot and set up a web page urging people to not to vote for. and released a report suggesting the measure came to a vote because of “a large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions.” Floridians Protecting Freedom has denied wrongdoing.

Anti-abortion activists have since filed a lawsuit seeking to remove the measure from the ballot or invalidate the votes cast.