Jefferson City, Mo. - The ACLU of Missouri and Stinson LLP presented arguments in a lawsuit charging the Secretary of State’s certified ballot language for HJR 73, now Amendment 3, as unfair and inaccurate. Additionally, the challenge asserts that the General Assembly failed in their duty to limit the proposed constitutional amendment to the single subject of “reproductive health care” by logrolling an arbitrary judicial process restricts the topics of lawsuits that circuit courts may hear, a notification system to alert the Attorney General on all private and non-state involved lawsuits, and a ban on all health care for transgender adolescents.
Tori Schafer, Director of Policy and Campaigns at the ACLU of Missouri, released the following statement upon the conclusion of the hearing:
“The General Assembly’s authority is derived from the people, and the people reserved the sole power to amend the state constitution to protect ourselves from an oppressive and controlling government. Even the limited carve out for the General Assembly must be approved by a majority of voters and is constitutionally required to provide fair and accurate language while only containing one subject. Amendment 3, passed as HJR 73, violates both of those constitutional requirements.
“Leading up to our vote that ended Missouri’s abortion ban and protected reproductive freedom just last November, politicians failed to listen and enact rights that Missourians wanted, specifically around abortion access. Our client responded by submitting several initiative petitions, which Missourians enthusiastically collected hundreds of thousands of signatures for and passed at the ballot box to guarantee protections for reproductive freedom.
“Yet, even today, the failures of the general assembly continue. Rather than upholding our vote and removing laws that violate our fundamental right to reproductive freedom, anti-abortion politicians schemed with special interest groups and advanced a copy and paste bill full of highly-charged, politically-biased language that is unfair and inaccurate while combining several unrelated topics with the sole purpose to mislead voters so they can reinstate the abortion ban in Missouri.
“Anti-abortion politicians know they are out of touch with voters, which is why they don’t say that Amendment 3 eliminates the fundamental right to reproductive freedom; abolishes explicit constitutional protections for abortion access, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, and respectful birthing conditions; and would overturn protections against prosecution for physicians related to pregnancy outcomes.
“They don’t say it because they know that amendment would be defeated. They seek to manufacture a different outcome by repackaging the question with empty protections, biased language, while using one resolution to combine several unrelated topics."
The lawsuit requests that the court enjoin Amendment 3 and prevent it from being placed on any ballot for violating the single subject clause multiple times or, at minimum, give Missourians fair and accurate ballot language that truthfully describes the consequences of this Amendment.
Read full brief.