Lawsuit Over Proposed Abortion Amendment Moving Forward to Ohio Supreme Court

Pro-abortion rights groups have already begun collecting signatures to place abortion rights access on the November ballot.

By Susan Tebben, Ohio Capital Journal on Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 12:06 pm

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Photo: Bill Oxford

The state has until Wednesday, April 5 to formally respond to the lawsuit from Cincinnati Right to Life.

The Ohio Supreme Court has set a schedule for briefs and evidence in a lawsuit claiming the Ohio Ballot Board was wrong to approve a proposed abortion constitutional amendment as one issue.

The state has until Wednesday, April 5 to formally respond to the lawsuit. All parties in the suit have until April 7 to get documents into the court related to the case, including arguments for and against it and evidence on both sides.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of two members of the Cincinnati Right to Life group, claims the Ohio Ballot Board should have denied the proposed amendment in its unanimous vote that the language of the ballot initiative only handled one constitutional issue.

Ohio Supreme Court Appointee in Abortion Law Case Tied to Anti-Choice Pregnancy Center: According to Judge Byrne’s LinkedIn, he was an advisory board member for Pregnancy Center East in Madisonville from January 2015 to December 2020.

With the approval by the ballot board, pro-abortion rights groups have already begun collecting the necessary signatures to formally place the issue on the November ballot. They’ll need more than 400,000 signatures in 44 of the 88 Ohio counties, numbers which may change if GOP leaders have their way, and force an August primary to change the threshold to allow votes on constitutional amendments.

Currently, ballot initiative supporters have until July to collect the proper amount of signatures.

This story was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.