Tallahassee ? The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a law signed by Gov. Jeb Bush that requires parents to be notified at least 48 hours before their children under 18 can obtain abortions.

By a 5-1 vote, the justices in Tallahassee said the 1999 law violated privacy rights guaranteed under the Florida Constitution.

The opinion reinforced and relied heavily on a similar state Supreme Court decision that overturned a parental consent abortion law in 1989. That decision also rested on the state constitution’s explicit privacy guarantee.

“We recognize that the legal issue of abortion has been one of the most gut-wrenching, emotionally laden issues of the past decades in Florida,” Senior Justice Leander Shaw wrote for the majority. “Sitting as a court, however, we cannot be ruled by emotion.”

He said the state’s privacy guarantee was stronger than rights provided by the U.S. Constitution. The majority found no compelling state interest in restricting the privacy guarantee with a parental-notification law.

Lawmakers had passed a similar notification bill in 1998 but it was vetoed by Gov. Lawton Chiles. Bush signed the bill a year later, but it was never enforced because of the challenge from abortion providers.

The ruling was criticized by Bush, an abortion opponent.