Nebraska ballot can include competing measures to expand or limit abortion rights, high court rules

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that competing measures that would expand or limit abortion rights can appear on the November ballot.

The high court’s ruling came days after it heard arguments in three lawsuits that sought to keep one or both of the state’s competing abortion initiatives off the November ballot.

Organizers for the competing measures each turned in well over the 123,000 required valid signatures needed to get them on the ballot.

One initiative would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until viability, or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution Nebraska’s current 12-week abortion ban, passed by the Legislature in 2023, which includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant woman.

Two lawsuits — one brought by an Omaha resident and the other by a Nebraska neonatologist who both oppose abortion — argued that the measure seeking to expand abortion rights violates the state’s prohibition against addressing more than one subject in a bill or ballot proposal. They say the ballot measure deals with abortion rights until viability, abortion rights after viability to protect the woman’s health and whether the state should be allowed to regulate abortion, amounting to three separate issues.

A similar single-subject argument on an abortion rights ballot measure before the conservative Florida Supreme Court failed earlier this year.

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