What happened
The conservative Florida Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Monday that contrary to decades of rulings, the Florida Constitution's right to privacy does not prohibit limits on abortion. The ruling allows a six-week abortion ban, passed last year, to take effect May 1. The court simultaneously ruled 4-3 that a ballot measure prohibiting restrictions on abortion until about 24 weeks can go before voters in November.

Who said what
The six-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and fetal abnormalities, "is a compromise that addresses where I think many Floridians are," state House Speaker Paul Renner (R) said. Allowing this "extreme" law to take effect "demonstrates how precarious our personal freedoms are in the state," said Rep. Anna Eskamani (D). 

The commentary
The dual decisions "will all but eliminate abortion access in the South" and "ensure that abortion is a major issue in Florida during the presidential election," likely boosting Democratic turnout, The Washington Post said. 

What next?
The referendum to enshrine abortion rights in Florida's Constitution needs 60% support to pass. "Early polling has shown that more than 60% of Floridians support the amendment," The Wall Street Journal said.

What happened
A dairy worker in the Texas Panhandle developed a mild case of H5N1 avian influenza after working with infected cows, Texas health officials said Monday. The patient is only the second person known to have contracted this strain of bird flu in the U.S. and the first anywhere infected through mammals, The Associated Press said.

Who said what
"Initial testing has not found changes to the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans," the CDC, FDA and USDA said jointly. "This indicates that the current risk to the public remains low."

The commentary
The Texas patient exhibited only eye inflammation, but the case "has alarmed disease trackers monitoring for the worst-case scenario: human-to-human transmission," The Washington Post said. Bird flu has been spreading through wild animals and, since March 25, dairy herds in Texas, Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico, so the jump to humans "really wasn't a question of if but when," UTHealth Houston's Dr. Luis Ostrosky told the Houston Chronicle.

What next?
The dairy worker is expected to fully recover. And there is no current plan to cull the infected herds, the USDA said. Pasteurized milk is believed to be safe.