Arkansas Supreme Court upholds rejection of abortion rights petitions, blocking ballot measure

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of signature petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative on Thursday, keeping the proposal from going before voters in November.

The ruling dashed the hopes of organizers, who submitted the petitions, of getting the constitutional amendment measure on the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top leaders tout their opposition to abortion.

Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that assertion and argued it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.

“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the court said in a 4-3 ruling.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.

Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.

The proposed amendment would have prohibited laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allowed the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.

The ballot proposal lacked support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would still have allowed abortion to be banned after 20 weeks, which is earlier than other states where it remains legal.

Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.

In a earlier filing with the court, election officials said that 87,675 of the signatures submitted were collected by volunteers with the campaign. Election officials said it could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteer or paid canvassers.

Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.

Supporters of the measure said they followed the law with their documentation, including affidavits identifying each paid gatherer. They have also argued the abortion petitions are being handled differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.

State records show that the abortion campaign did submit, on June 27, a signed affidavit including a list of paid canvassers and a statement saying the petition rules had been explained to them. Moreover, the July 5 submission included affidavits from each paid worker acknowledging that the group provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.

The state argued in court that this documentation did not comply because it was not signed by someone with the canvassing company rather than the initiative campaign itself. The state said the statement also needed to be submitted alongside the petitions.

Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press