Supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment cheer in the Capitol lobby on Friday, July 5, 2024, as movers deliver petitions to put the amendment on the November ballot. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
By Antoinette Grajeda, Arkansas Advocate
Arkansans for Limited Government on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to deny the attorney general’s motion to dismiss its lawsuit challenging the secretary of state’s rejection of the group’s proposed ballot measure to expand abortion access.
AFLG, the ballot question committee supporting the proposed constitutional amendment, filed a lawsuit on July 16 asking the high court to order Secretary of State John Thurston to count the more than 101,000 signatures the group submitted in support of the measure on July 5.
The group also asked the court to expedite the case with a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction overruling Thurston’s decision not to count the signatures.
AFLG said in a statement Monday night that it continues “to assert, strongly, that the facts of this case require the Secretary of State to count our signatures.”
“Our response to the Attorney General’s motion today reemphasizes our belief that the attempt to disqualify the Arkansas Abortion Amendment was illegitimate and undemocratic,” the statement said. “We remain hopeful that the Court will rule in a manner that honors our state Constitution and prevents the government from weaponizing paperwork to skirt the will of the people.”
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed Friday, Attorney General Tim Griffin contended Thurston “correctly rejected” AFLG’s submission because the group failed to submit a sponsor statement indicating it had provided canvassers with a handbook and explained the legal requirements for obtaining signatures.
Griffin also argued the Arkansas Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction over AFLG’s original action because the group did not comply with requirements.
In a response to Griffin’s motion filed Monday, attorney Peter Shults argued on behalf of AFLG that the court does have original jurisdiction because Thurston made a sufficiency determination.
Shults said Griffin incorrectly argued Thurston’s decision was not a sufficiency determination because state law requires the secretary to “ascertain and declare the sufficiency or insufficiency of the signatures” when a petition is submitted.
“The law gives the Secretary no other options,” he wrote.
Shults also argued that noncompliance with § 7-9-111(f)(2), the state law that Thurston cited as the reason for rejecting AFLG’s petition, alone does not invalidate an entire petition or any part of it. A separate section of state code provides “the exclusive list of reasons” for not counting petition signatures, not the statute cited by Thurston, he said.
Griffin’s arguments for dismissal are based on noncompliance with state law, but Shults argued that petitioners did comply “in a manner already endorsed by the Secretary’s office.” Thurston does not dispute that Allison Clark sent a Sponsor Affidavit to the Secretary’s office on June 27, 2024, that the affidavit attested to the information requested in state law or that it was signed by Clark as an agent of AFLG, Shults said.
However, “citing no authority,” Thurston argued that Clark can’t be a sponsor or agent of a sponsor because she also worked for the company that hired paid canvassers and was listed as a paid canvasser, Shults said. Nothing in statute prohibits a canvasser, paid or unpaid, from acting as a sponsor’s agent, he said.
“To follow the Secretary’s logic would mean that no sponsor, as an individual or individual working on behalf of a sponsor entity, could also be a paid canvasser,” Shults wrote. “Such an interpretation limits that individual’s ‘core political speech’ and likely violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
When asked by AFLG what it would need to sign and submit on the day of filing, the secretary’s office responded that only the Receipt for Initiative or Referendum Petition was needed, Shults said. Additionally, Thurston’s attorneys and representatives assured petitioner Lauren Cowles on July 5 that she had filed the necessary paperwork with her submission, Shults said.
“Petitioners continually tried to follow the correct procedures and the Secretary’s office repeatedly told them they were doing so, before the Secretary abruptly rejected their petition,” he wrote. “This bait and switch was unfair, and the Secretary should be estopped from rejecting petitioners’ submission.”
If the proposed Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024 makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters in November, it would not allow government entities to “prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion services within 18 weeks of fertilization.”
The proposal would also permit abortion services in cases of rape, incest, a fatal fetal anomaly or to “protect the pregnant female’s life or physical health,” and it would nullify any of the state’s existing “provisions of the Constitution, statutes and common law” that conflict with it.
Abortion has been illegal in Arkansas, except to save the pregnant person’s life, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Constitutional amendments need 90,704 signatures to qualify for the ballot. AFLG said it submitted a total of 101,525 signatures and met the qualifying minimum of 3% of voters in 53 counties. A 2023 state law being challenged in court requires signatures be collected from at least 50 counties, an increase from 15.
Sponsors of proposed ballot measures can be allowed more time — the “cure period” — to submit additional signatures if the initial submission contains valid signatures from registered voters equal to at least 75% of the overall required number of signatures and 75% of the required number from at least 50 counties.
Griffin’s motion to dismiss said AFLG is not entitled to a cure period.
The Arkansas Advocate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to tough, fair daily reporting and investigative journalism that holds public officials accountable and focuses on the relationship between the lives of Arkansans and public policy.
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