BY: RUDI KELLER
Missouri Independent
The Republican plan to ban most abortions in Missouri can go before voters next year but the ballot title must plainly say its intent, a Cole County judge ruled Friday.
The decision from Circuit Judge Daniel Green concluded that lawmakers properly combined bans on gender-affirming treatments for minors with reproductive rights in the proposed constitutional amendment but misled voters with the ballot language.
Quoting a Western District Court of Appeals ruling from 2020, Green wrote that “it was insufficient and unfair for a summary statement to fail to ‘alert voters to that change in some fashion.’”
And the ballot language, he wrote, fails to alert voters that it would repeal the reproductive rights section of the Missouri Constitution approved in the 2024 election.
In the ruling, Green ordered Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to submit revised language within seven days. Green also found that the “fair ballot language” summary posted on Hoskins’ office website was misleading for also failing to state abortion would be banned in most cases, and ordered revisions to be submitted within seven days.
The challenge to the proposal, which will appear as Amendment 3 on a ballot next year, asked Green to throw it out entirely for combining abortion and gender-affirming care for minors under 18.
During an August hearing, attorney Chuck Hatfield argued that the inclusion of the gender-affirming health care ban was “ballot candy” meant to win over more voters but is a separate issue from reproductive health care.
Green disagreed in his ruling, saying the two issues are closely related enough to meet constitutional requirements for a single subject. In a footnote, Green pointed to the website of the Columbia Planned Parenthood clinic, which lists abortion and gender-affirming care among the services provided.
It is the ballot language that does not mention the abortion rights repeal, that is “insufficient and unfair,” Green wrote.
Republican state Senate leaders shut down a Democratic filibuster in May to push the measure to the ballot.
If approved by a majority of voters, the abortion ban amendment would repeal a citizen-led reproductive rights amendment that passed last November legalizing abortion in Missouri until the point of fetal viability and enshrining other reproductive rights in the constitution, including in-vitro fertilization and contraceptives.
The new amendment would reinstate an abortion ban, allowing limited exceptions for medical emergencies, fatal fetal anomolies and for survivors of rape and incest in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
After Hoskins delivers the revised language, parties in the case will have three days to submit arguments on whether it satisfies legal requirements.