JEFFERSON CITY — Two Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit Monday that could further imperil efforts to place a question on the 2024 ballot designed to restore abortion rights in Missouri.
In a 13-page petition, Rep. Hannah Kelly, R-Mountain Grove, and Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Arnold, asked a judge to toss out a summary of the cost of the proposed ballot initiatives that was prepared by Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.
The maneuver comes despite a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last month that backed Fitzpatrick in a lawsuit against Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who unsuccessfully argued that restoring abortion rights could cost billions of dollars.
But the high court ruling centered on Bailey’s legal duties, not on the substance of the auditor’s estimate.
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Fitzpatrick, a Republican who is opposed to abortion, put the price tag at $51,000 based on a survey his office conducted.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say Fitzpatrick’s estimate is “inaccurate in a way that is both misleading to voters and obvious to and curable by the auditor.â€
In a joint statement, Kelly, Coleman and a third plaintiff, Kathleen Forck, said, “Missouri voters deserve complete fairness and transparency on the impact of initiative petitions so they can make fully-informed decisions.â€
“Our legal challenge to the fiscal note is not about individual officeholders, but about the omission of the true fiscal costs to individual Missourians with measures that could imperil their financial futures, and cost the state billions of dollars in health care funding,†the statement said.
The net effect of the new lawsuit may be more delays in attempts by abortion rights supporters to begin collecting signatures to place a question on the ballot.
“This is another attempt by power-obsessed politicians to prevent Missourians from voting on reproductive rights. The bogus lawsuit parrots the already court-rejected claims of the attorney general,†the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri said in a statement.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, ºüÀêÊÓƵ doctor Anna Fitz-James filed 11 versions of a proposed constitutional amendment in March seeking to declare that the “government shall not infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom.â€
The proposal, if approved by a majority of Missouri voters, would outlaw penalties for both patients seeking reproductive-related care and medical providers.
But before supporters can start gathering signatures from registered voters, they’ve faced roadblocks erected by Bailey and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who wrote a ballot summary that also is the subject of a lawsuit over its “misleading†language.
A separate lawsuit over Ashcroft’s language is set to be heard Sept. 11 in Cole County.
While the process for certifying a ballot proposal is typically 56 days, the matter has stretched out to more than 150 days. The process should have been completed in May, said attorneys for the ACLU, who are representing Fitz-James.
In the case involving Bailey’s flawed cost estimate, the Missouri Supreme Court noted that the Republican stall tactics were depriving voters of their right to change the Constitution via a vote.
The high court wrote that for more than 40 years the process has been “liberally construed†to favor voters rights rather than technical roadblocks erected by public officials.
The new lawsuit argues Fitzpatrick “should have warned Missourians that the initiative petitions imperil billions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding to Missouri.â€
It said “the amounts of funding in question are enormous and potentially crippling to Missouri’s healthcare system and economy.â€
A spokesman for Fitzpatrick said the office was reviewing the lawsuit.