This story is developing and will be updated.

A proposed Arkansas constitutional amendment that would have created a limited right to abortion will not be on the statewide November ballot, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 ruling Thursday.

The reason, the court said, is that supporters did not submit the correct paperwork to Secretary of State John Thurston’s office at the right time.

The court’s majority opinion concludes a five-week legal dispute over the signatures collected by paid canvassers for the proposed amendment. The decision also comes on the deadline for Thurston’s office to distribute certified election ballots to county election officials.

The ballot question committee Arkansans for Limited Government submitted more than 102,000 signatures for the amendment to Thurston’s office on the deadline of July 5. Proposed amendments require 90,704 signatures from 50 counties to qualify for the ballot.

Thurston said July 10 that the 14,143 signatures collected by paid canvassers were invalid and that he would not count the remaining signatures because they would fall below the required minimum.

State law requires ballot question committees to submit an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name and proof that the committee explained to canvassers the state’s laws for soliciting signatures and provided them with the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook before they started canvassing.

AFLG repeatedly insisted that it did submit the required documents. The group submitted a “Sponsor Affidavit” signed by Allison Clark to Thurston’s office on June 27, testifying to the signature collection education portion of the law, and court filings state it was the seventeenth time the document was submitted.

The group also said it routinely submitted lists of paid canvassers to Thurston, including on July 4 and 5, and did not include another sponsor affidavit on those days because Thurston’s staff said it was not necessary and all the correct paperwork had been filed.

“We have explained that even in election matters, the burden of determining what the law requires falls on the filer—not office staff,” the court’s opinion states. “…Thus, as the facts are undisputed, we hold that AFLG, by its own admission, failed to submit the required paid canvasser training certification.”

AFLG submitted the certification July 11 and argued that Thurston should accept it, but the court disagreed.

The committee initially asked the Supreme Court July 16 to order Thurston to count the remaining signatures, and the court granted the request July 23. Thurston’s office counted 87,675 signatures from registered voters.

The court reiterated its decision to grant this request Thursday, but it denied the remaining petition, which asked for Thurston to certify the proposed amendment for the ballot.

“We order that the 87,675 signatures be counted for purposes of the initial facial count because there is no constitutional or statutory authority to support not counting them,” the opinion states. “We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers… AFLG needed 90,704 signatures to complete the first stage of the initial facial count to proceed to the verification stage. As it failed to obtain this number of signatures, AFLG is not entitled to any further relief.”

Attorney General Tim Griffin, representing Thurston’s office, asked the Supreme Court on July 19 to dismiss the case. The court’s Thursday decision denied the motion.

Chief Justice John Dan Kemp and Associate Justices Karen Baker and Courtney Hudson dissented from the majority opinion.

The Arkansas Abortion Amendment would not have allowed government entities to “prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion services within 18 weeks of fertilization.” 

The proposal would also have permitted abortion services in cases of rape, incest, a fatal fetal anomaly or to “protect the pregnant female’s life or physical health,” and it would have nullified any of the state’s existing “provisions of the Constitution, statutes and common law” that conflict with it.

Abortion has been illegal in Arkansas, except to save the pregnant person’s life, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

AFLG told the court earlier this month that Thurston’s rejection of the amendment was viewpoint discrimination, citing his 2022 endorsement from the anti-abortion group Arkansas Right to Life and his donation to the group earlier this year.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on Facebook and X.