Michigan abortion rights group calls on state Supreme Court to put protections on November ballots

Supporters collected more than 750,000 signatures on a petition to put abortion rights on November ballots. Two Republicans shot it down over a spacing issue

Michigan abortion rights advocates are demanding that the state’s Supreme Court allow voters to decide on a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine protections for abortion rights in the state.

In a filing on 1 September, Reproductive Freedom for All said a board “abandoned its clear legal duty” by rejecting a petition to put the question on November ballots.

On 31 August, the four-member panel deadlocked on a proposal to put the constitutional amendment on ballots this fall – because of a spacing issue on the petition.

After petitioners collected more than 750,000 signatures, above and beyond the threshold for getting the referendum on the ballot, the two Republican members on the state’s Board of State Canvassers shot it down because a spacing error between words on the petition represented “an egregious error”.

The abortion rights group promoting the ballot measure – which, if approved by Michigan voters, would add abortion rights protections to the state’s constitutions – has now asked the state Supreme Court to reverse the board’s decision.

The board “abandoned its clear legal duty when it declined to qualify the measure to appear on the ballot,” attorneys for Reproductive Freedom for All wrote in their filing on Thursday.

“The voters should be afforded the opportunity to make their voices heard at the polls,” according to the filing.

“Urgent adjudication is necessary to prevent political pretense from interfering” with voters’ constitutional rights, attorneys wrote.

Michigan’s high court will have to act relatively fast; absentee ballots for November elections will be printed and mailed out in coming weeks.

“Given the tight deadlines associated with this case,” Reproductive Freedom for All has asked the court to take action by 7 September.

Election Day is 8 November.

The group noted that there were no disputes about the number of signatures to get the question on the ballot. Instead, opponents “resorted to hyperbole” over the spacing of words on the petition, calling the small spaces between some words “gibberish” and “incomprehensible argle-bargle,” attorneys said.

The filing argues that the opponents “are unable to point to a single individual that did not understand” what was on the petition.

States are embroiled in legal battles across the US against newly enacted anti-abortion laws after the US Supreme Court’s decision on 24 June in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoked a constitutional right to abortion care.

At least 12 states have outlawed abortion entirely in nearly all instances in the two months after the court’s ruling, forcing the closure of more than 40 clinics and denying access to care for more than 20 million women and girls.

Michigan still has a nearly century-old law – drafted decades before the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade – that outlaws nearly all abortions.

Last month, a judge ruled that local prosecutors cannot enforce the state’s “dangerous and chilling” ban on abortion care.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Jacob James Cunningham said the state’s ban “simply does not pass constitutional muster” and granted a preliminary injunction that indefinitely blocks the law until a final ruling is determined.