In narrow ruling, Arkansas Supreme Court keeps abortion off the ballot

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that abortion will not be on the ballot in November, upholding the state’s rejection of a petition to bring an abortion access measure before voters because organizers had failed to submit the required paperwork on time.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court’s majority sided with Secretary of State John Thurston (R), who in July rejected a petition submitted by Arkansans for Limited Government that carried more than 100,000 signatures because the group had not submitted training certifications for paid canvassers it used.

The decision stymies a monthslong campaign to put abortion on the ballot in a deep red state governed by leaders who oppose it. The ballot proposal brought by Arkansans for Limited Government sought to legalize abortion up to 18 weeks after fertilization and grant exceptions afterward in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly or threat of physical harm to the pregnant patient. The group said it collected 101,525 signatures in support of the measure, comfortably crossing the state’s required threshold of around 90,000 signatures.

Arkansas officials, including Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), celebrated the court’s decision.

“Proud I helped build the first conservative Supreme Court majority in the history of Arkansas and today that court upheld the rule of law, and with it, the right to life,” Sanders said in a statement on X. Last year, Sanders appointed a state GOP chairman and former prosecutor to Arkansas’s highest court, giving the body a conservative majority, the Associated Press reported.

Arkansans for Limited Government said in a statement that “today is a dark day for Arkansas.”

“This effort has generated a wave of fiercely engaged Arkansas women,” the group said. “We are outraged. We will not back down. And we will remember this in November.”

Had the ballot proposal been successful, Arkansas would have joined about a dozen states that will vote on abortion rights this fall, including conservative strongholds such as South Dakota, Missouri and Florida.

Organizers in the state faced stiff headwinds in what was seen as a long-shot bid, largely overlooked on the national stage in favor of similar efforts in swing states and staunchly opposed by antiabortion groups within Arkansas.

But it was ultimately what officials argued was a paperwork blunder that derailed Arkansans for Limited Government’s campaign after the group met its deadline with more than enough signatures.

Thurston said organizers did not submit a document naming the paid canvassers that the group used and a signed statement confirming those paid canvassers had been properly trained, violating a state law that requires those forms to be submitted alongside a petition.

In its appeal to the state Supreme Court, Arkansans for Limited Government argued that it complied with requirements by submitting forms about its paid canvassers in advance of submitting its petition, and that Thurston was misinterpreting state law by throwing out the entire petition due to the missing forms, which was a correctable mistake.

Around 87,675 of the signatures collected by Arkansas for Limited Government were gathered by volunteer canvassers, according to court documents.

The Supreme Court’s majority sided with Thurston in ruling that the delayed paperwork was fatal for Arkansans for Limited Government’s petition.

“This court is being asked to order another constitutional officer, the Arkansas Secretary of State, to ignore a mandatory statutory provision that he has enforced,” Associate Justice Rhonda K. Wood wrote for the court’s majority. “That is not the proper role of the court.”

Dissenting judges accused the majority of twisting state law to keep voters from deciding an important issue.

Earlier this month, two other ballot question groups that gathered signatures for petitions to expand access to medical marijuana and to give local voters a say on casino proposals intervened to help Arkansans for Limited Government’s Supreme Court case. The groups said the state did not apply its rules for qualifying petitions consistently, and that the disqualification of the abortion access petition could compromise their petitions.

“Why are the respondent and the majority determined to keep this particular vote from the people?” Justice Karen R. Baker wrote in dissent. “The majority has succeeded in its efforts to change the law in order to deprive the voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue.”