South Dakota Supreme Court reverses decision on ballot initiative
The case will return to a district judge for further deliberation as Aug. 13 deadline looms
The legal dispute in South Dakota over the proposed ballot initiative was again volleyed back to the district court for further deliberation.
The state supreme court reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit brought by an antiabortion activist that sought to remove the proposed amendment from the ballot. In the original lawsuit, the anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund said Dakotans for Health, the pro-choice group, had committed several wrongs in securing the signatures needed to get it up for a vote.
Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, said the antiabortion lawyers are maneuvering in the case because the secretary of state needs to inform county auditors what will be on the ballot by Aug. 13. If the judge were to rule adversely too close to that date, then the pro-choice side wouldn’t have time to correct the issues with the petition.
“There's just a desperate attempt by the right-to-life lobby in this state to do everything they can to make sure that voters don't get a chance to vote on reproductive rights,” Weiland said.
The lawsuit, filed in June by the Life Defense Fund, alleges that the petition was signed multiple times and that misleading information was included. Dakotans for Health, the committee that spearheaded the ballot initiative, is accused of misrepresenting the initiative's purpose.
After South Dakota judge John Pekas ruled a ballot initiative protecting abortion access could go forward, the antiabortion plaintiffs in the case appealed to the state supreme court in a last-ditch effort to prevent the amendment from going before voters.
Despite the case returning to district court, Weiland is confident that the ballot initiative will go forward and be passed by voters.
“It's never happened before that the Secretary of State could be ordered by the court to proclaim at some point in the remaining days of the cycle that they're not going to count the votes,” Weiland said. “And, that's just a bridge way too far. But that's all they got right now because they know it's unlikely this is going to resolve before August 13.”
As a side note, I’ve read extensively on the criticisms of the ballot initiatives in Arkansas and South Dakota, similar to the one that passed in Ohio and the one on the ballot in Florida. While those laws don’t extend the same protections as the New York law, they would restore abortion access in most cases for women living in those states and nearby ones.
As a writer and activist, I’m taking the position that we should seek to pass the initiatives as they are written and then later extend further protections by flipping state legislatures when the inevitable grassroots moment to do that arrives. The amendments permit regulation later in pregnancy but don’t require it.
I could discuss the evolution of the protections given to abortion access in New York and California, but it’s fair and accurate to say that when they were first granted, in the 1970s, they weren’t as liberal as they are now. They progressed to that point, but public opinions would have to shift in other parts of the country before they reached the viewpoints of liberal enclaves.
So, hopefully, these legal hurdles will clear across the country, and we will get greater access sooner rather than later.