Competitive Action The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a bill expanding or limiting abortion rights could appear on the ballot this fall.
The Nebraska Supreme Court issued its ruling days after hearing arguments in three lawsuits seeking to keep one or both of the state’s contested districts open. legacy Initiatives excluded from November ballot.
Organizers of each competing measure submitted far more signatures than the 123,000 valid signatures needed to get on the ballot.
One initiative would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to terminate a pregnancy until viability or later, to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would enshrine in the Constitution Nebraska’s current 12-week abortion ban, which passed in 2023 by the Legislature. The ban includes exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the pregnant woman.
The two lawsuits — filed by an Omaha resident and a Nebraska neonatologist — both argue that the measure seeking to expand abortion rights violates a state law that prohibits a bill or ballot measure from addressing more than one topic. They say the ballot measure addresses three separate issues: the right to abortion up to viability, the right to abortion after viability to protect the woman’s health, and whether the state can regulate abortion.
Similar single topic claims Abortion Rights Ballot That was before the conservative Florida Supreme Court ruled against it earlier this year.
A third lawsuit challenged the 12-week ban initiative. That filing argued that if the high court ruled that the abortion rights measure failed the single-target test, it should also rule that the 12-week ban initiative failed.
The attorney for the third lawsuit argued that the 12-week ban would include at least six separate issues, including restrictions on abortion in the first, second and third trimesters, and separate exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
State supreme courts have had mixed results on single-subject legal issues. In 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana after ruling that a provision allowing people to use and produce marijuana was a separate subject that violated the state’s single-subject rule.
But in July, the court ruled that a hybrid bill passed by Congress in 2023 that combined a 12-week abortion ban with another measure restricting gender-affirming health care for minors did not violate the single-subject rule. That followed a strong dissent from Justice Lindsey Miller-Lemmon, who criticized the majority for applying different standards to bills passed by Congress and those pushed by voter referendums.
The court agreed to expedite the hearing and decision on the case, eliminating the need for a lower court to hear the case and allowing the issue to be decided before ballots are printed across the state. The deadline to certify Nebraska November ballots is Friday.
Nebraska would become the first state to pass competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the measure. Overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022It effectively ended 50 years of national abortion rights and made abortion a state issue. But the issue of abortion will be on the ballot in nine states this year. Measures to protect access have also been qualified to appear before voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota.
New York also has a ballot measure that supporters say will protect abortion rights, but its impact is disputed. Arkansas does not have such a measure on the ballot, but there is an ongoing lawsuit to add it. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, voters in all seven states with abortion-related ballot measures have supported abortion rights.
Since Roe was overturned, most Republican-controlled states have enacted some form of abortion ban.
Currently, 14 states ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. Four states ban abortion after about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Only Nebraska and North Carolina ban abortion after 12 weeks.
