Ohio Supreme Court rejects legal challenge, clears path for November abortion rights vote
The Ohio Supreme Court cleared the path for a November vote on abortion access by rejecting a legal challenge to backers' petitions.
In a unanimous decision, the Ohio Supreme Court denied a lawsuit filed by several Republicans to boot the measure from the Nov. 7 ballot. The GOP politicos had argued that abortion rights activists failed to include on their petitions the language of state abortion laws that would be repealed if the constitutional amendment passed.
The legal challenge was filed days after abortion rights proponents cleared the signature requirement to appear on the fall ballot.
Attorneys for the abortion rights measure agreed that their petitions did not spell out which state abortion policies would be eliminated. However, they contended the Republicans' arguments weren't relevant, and the requirement to include those laws was unconstitutional.
The GOP politicos, through their attorney Curt Hartman, disagreed, saying the requirement to include laws that could be changed by a constitutional amendment "facilitates the integrity and confidence of the entire initiative process."
Ultimately, the Ohio Supreme Court, composed of four Republicans and three Democrats, ruled in favor of the abortion rights measure.
"The fair and natural reading of (Ohio law) does not require a petition proposing a constitutional amendment to include the text of an existing statute," according to the court's opinion.
Justice Pat Fischer, a Republican, wrote that those bringing the legal challenge could not confidently identify which state laws that could be impacted by the constitutional amendment on reproductive rights. Challenger Jenn "Giroux has not shown that the proposed constitutional amendment would amend or repeal any existing statute," he wrote.
Kellie Copeland, a spokesperson for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, praised the court for its quick, unanimous ruling clearing the way for voters to decide the fate of abortion access in November. "Ohioans believe that we should have the freedom to make our own personal health care decisions about pregnancy and abortion, free from government interference.”
Hartman said his clients "simply called upon the court to apply well-established legal principles, including, most significantly, to give effect to the law as written, not to rewrite the law or to legislate from the bench."
"Disappointedly, as a result of the court's decision, the proponents of the proposed constitutional amendment will continue to be able to hide from the public the radical scope of a proposal that will outright eliminate existing laws on a broad range of matters," Hartman said.
The legal challenge was the latest in a series of GOP efforts to block or slow down the abortion rights proposal. On Tuesday, Ohioans rejected Issue 1, which would have raised the threshold needed to amend the state constitution − and made it harder for the abortion rights measure to pass.
Hartman previously challenged the five-member Ohio Ballot Board's decision to keep the abortion measure as one issue rather than dividing it up into several parts. That would have required proponents to collect double the number of valid signatures.
Ohio is the only state in the nation voting on abortion access in 2023. Six other states voted on the issue in 2022, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. That ruling sent decisions about abortion access back to state lawmakers and courts.
Read the opinion:
More: What does the defeat of Issue 1 mean for the Ohio abortion amendment this November?
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Supreme Court rejects legal challenge to abortion rights issue
