LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state’s rejection of signed petitions for an abortion rights referendum, blocking the proposal from going before voters in November.
The ruling dashed organizers’ hopes of putting the constitutional amendment bill on the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top politicians have expressed opposition to abortion.
Election officials said Arkansas for Limited Government violated state law, primarily because it submitted the paperwork related to paid signature gatherers separately rather than in a single packet. The group argued that it should have been given more time to submit all the additional documents it needed.
“We find that the Secretary properly refused to count the signatures collected by paid poll workers because the sponsor failed to submit the training certificate for paid poll workers,” as required by law, Justice Rhonda Wood wrote for the 4-3 majority.
A dissenting judge wrote that the decision deprives Arkansas citizens of their rights and de facto changes the state’s initiative law.
“Why are defendant and the majority determined to withhold this particular vote from the people?” wrote Justice Karen Baker, who is running against Wood for chief justice. “The majority has succeeded in changing the law and depriving voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue, which is not the proper mission of this Court.”
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to strike down federal abortion rights, there has been a push to let voters in individual states decide the issue. Montana on Tuesday became the eighth state to put an abortion question on the ballot this fall.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters have won in all seven states where abortion issues were put to the vote.
The organization Arkansas for Limited Government issued an emailed statement calling the ruling “a black day for Arkansas.”
“This effort has brought forth a wave of committed Arkansas women,” the group said. “We are outraged. We will not back down. And we will remember that in November.”
Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders took credit for the move on Thursday: “I am proud to have helped build the first conservative Supreme Court majority in Arkansas history, and that this Court today upheld the rule of law and the right to life,” she posted on X.
Currently, Arkansas prohibits abortion at any time during pregnancy unless the woman’s life is in danger due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would have banned laws prohibiting abortion in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and permitted the procedure later in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or when the fetus would not likely survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.
The ballot proposal did not gain support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would have allowed a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, earlier than in other states where it is still legal.
If they had all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures submitted by the July 5 deadline would have been enough to get it on the ballot. The minimum requirement was 90,704 signatures from registered voters in at least 50 counties.
In an earlier filing with the court, election officials said 87,675 of the submitted signatures were collected by campaign volunteers. Election officials said they could not determine whether 912 of the signatures were from volunteers or paid poll workers. The court majority said only the signatures collected by volunteers could be counted because they were below the threshold.
“This is a victory for the rule of law in Arkansas and for those who have followed the rules for years to participate in the state’s ballot initiative process,” Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin, representing the Secretary of State’s office, said in a statement.
Members of the Arkansas Campaign for Limited Government and election officials disagreed about whether the signature collection complied with a 2013 state law that requires campaign teams to name every paid poll worker and certify that the rules for collecting signatures have been explained to them.
Supporters of the measure said they followed the law in documenting it, including identifying each paid collector. They also argued that the abortion petitions were being handled differently this year than other initiatives, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.
State records show that the abortion campaign filed a signed affidavit on June 27 that included a list of paid poll workers and a statement that the rules of the petition had been explained to them. The July 5 filing included affidavits from all paid staff members confirming that the group had provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.
The state argued in court that these documents did not meet the requirements because they were signed by someone from the campaign firm and not by someone from the initiative. The court did not rule on this issue.
However, the majority said on Thursday that the declaration must be submitted in a package so that “the minister has all the necessary information together and organized when he begins the process.”
The court ruled that the June 27 lawsuit did not affect 74 of the paid collectors employed by the abortion campaign.
In another dissent, Chief Justice Dan Kemp said the court should have ordered the state to count all the signatures and appoint a special investigator to review the disputed facts.
“This case represents an anomaly in Arkansas jurisprudence,” he wrote.
