Arkansas is sued for rejecting petitions on an abortion-rights ballot measure

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas is being sued for rejecting petitions in favor of a proposed ballot measure to scale back the state's abortion ban, with supporters asking the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to order officials to start counting more than 100,000 signatures from people who back amending the constitution.

The ballot measure wouldn't make abortion a constitutionally protected right, but it would limit when abortion can be banned. Giving voters a chance to weigh in on the state's ban would test support for abortion rights in Arkansas, where top elected officials regularly promote their opposition to the procedure.

Had they all been verified, the signatures submitted on the petitions would have been enough to get the measure on the November ballot. Arkansans for Limited Government, the group supporting the proposed constitutional amendment, asked the court to reverse the state’s decision. The group also wants the court to make Secretary of State John Thurston's office begin counting.

The secretary of state’s office said on July 10 that the group didn’t submit required statements related to the paid signature gatherers it used. The group has said the documentation it submitted — which included a list of the gatherers — did meet the legal requirements.

“The secretary’s unlawful rejection of petitioners’ submission prevents the people of Arkansas from exercising their right to adopt, or reject, the amendment,” the group's lawsuit said. “This court should correct the secretary’s error and reaffirm Arkansas’s motto, Regnat Populus, The People Rule.”

Thurston's office said it was reviewing the lawsuit and did not have an immediate comment.

The proposed amendment would prohibit laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation, and allow later abortions in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. Arkansas now bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless it’s necessary to protect the mother’s life in a medical emergency.

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

The group submitted more than 101,000 signatures on the state’s July 5 deadline. They needed at least 90,704 signatures from registered voters and a minimum number from 50 counties.

Election officials cited a 2013 Arkansas law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for signature-gathering were explained to them.

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

The state has asserted that this documentation didn’t comply because it wasn’t signed by the sponsor of the initiative, and because all of these documents were not included along with the signed petitions. In the lawsuit, Arkansans for Limited Government said Thurston's office assured the group on July 5 it had filed the necessary paperwork with its petitions.

Despite these disputes, the group says Arkansas law requires they be given an opportunity to provide any necessary paperwork so that the state can begin counting the signatures.

The group's lawsuit on Tuesday said the state's refusal to count the signatures anyway runs counter to what the state itself has argued in two previous cases on ballot measures before the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court removed the nationwide right to abortion in 2022 with a ruling that created a national push to have voters decide the matter state by state.

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature approved the current law. Litigating this effort to reinstate the petitions could be difficult. Conservatives hold a majority of seats on the seven-member Arkansas Supreme Court.

Oscar Stilley, an attorney not affiliated with the abortion initiative campaign. filed a separate lawsuit Tuesday also seeking to reverse the state's decision on the petitions.