MO Supreme Court refuses Ashcroft’s appeal of abortion measures, ending legal battle

A pair of rulings this week from the Missouri Supreme Court laid to rest the months-long legal battles that have kept a series of ballot measures seeking to restore the right to an abortion tied up in court.

The state’s highest court, in a short order late Monday, refused to review a request by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican candidate for governor, who sought to appeal rulings that struck down the incendiary language he wrote for the ballot measures. The court also denied an appeal request from three abortion opponents challenging cost estimates prepared by Republican Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.

The rulings should allow supporters to move forward with a campaign for the proposed ballot measures, which would amend the state constitution to add abortion rights after Missouri enacted a near-total ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

However, abortion rights supporters in Missouri have not yet rallied behind one version of the petition in the lead up to the 2024 election and have expressed concerns that the legal battles have delayed the campaign.

“The Missouri Supreme Court has upheld, once and for all, the people’s democratic right to a fair initiative petition process and to make their voices heard on their right and access to abortions,” said Mallory Schwarz, the executive director of Abortion Action Missouri. “Ashcroft has intentionally sabotaged this process, and now due to his actions, the campaign will have to evaluate the damage he’s done and what is possible moving forward.”

Monday’s order keeps in place rulings by two lower courts that rejected Ashcroft’s language for the measures, which would appear on the ballot. Ashcroft, who is running for governor in 2024, wrote in his summaries that the petitions would “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions.”

An appeals court last month ruled that Ashcroft’s language was “replete with politically partisan language,” writing that Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem was correct in striking them down and rewriting them.

Tom Bastian, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Missouri, which sued Ashcroft over the ballot summaries, said in a statement Tuesday that the ruling reaffirmed that Ashcroft’s case had “no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians’ constitutional rights” to advance his career.

Ashcroft, in a statement, said he stood by his language, saying it “fairly and accurately reflects the scope and magnitude of each petition” and his job was to make sure Missourians “have ballot language that they can understand and trust.”

“If these petitions make it to the ballot, the people will decide,” he said. “I will continue to do everything in my power to make sure Missourians know the truth.”

As of Tuesday, Ashcroft’s language still appeared on the initiative petitions available online. Another spokesperson for Ashcroft’s office said he has a deadline of next Tuesday to rewrite the summaries.

While Ashcroft’s summary refers to allowing “dangerous” abortions, the October appeals court ruling approved a summary that says the measures would “establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference presumed invalid” and that they would overturn the state’s ban on abortion.

Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, in a statement said the “political games” from Ashcroft and Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who fought against the fiscal cost of the ballot measures, “significantly interfered with the ballot process.”

“The courts saw through the misleading and stigmatizing language proposed by anti-abortion politicians and confirmed what we know to be true; the people of Missouri deserve fair and accurate language when their rights are at stake,” Wales said.

The Missouri Supreme Court on Monday also rejected a request from three abortion opponents, including two Republican lawmakers, to review a ruling that approved how much Fitzpatrick estimated the petitions would cost.

Fitzpatrick’s fiscal notes for the ballot measures say that state government agencies estimate no costs or savings and that local governments’ estimated a cost of “at least $51,000 annually in reduced tax revenues, but unknown impact.”

The abortion opponents argued that the proposals could cost the state billions, a figure that originated from anti-abortion groups and has been called inaccurate by Fitzpatrick.

The series of ballot proposals were submitted in March by Anna Fitz-James, a retired St. Louis doctor, on behalf of the group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom. If abortion rights supporters rally behind one of the versions to get it on the November 2024 ballot, they’ll have to collect more than 170,000 signatures from voters by May.