BOISE — The Idaho Supreme Court unanimously sided against the Idaho Secretary of State and the Idaho Attorney General on Friday in a lawsuit pertaining to how voters will be presented with an abortion initiative in their November ballots.
The decision arrived shortly after the court heard oral arguments for the case on Wednesday. Idahoans United for Women and Families — the group behind Proposition One or the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act initiative — sued the two constitutional officers, alleging the yes and no explaining the effects of their vote were “misleading.”
During oral arguments, the group contended the drafted statements failed to be “clear and concise” in speaking the effect of a yes or no vote and describe what a given vote would do and left out key details on both what the initiative would change and what the current status quo was under Idaho law.
In an opinion authored by Justice Gregory Moeller, the court agreed with Idahoans United that the drafted statements did not “clearly and concisely convey the effect of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on Proposition One.”
Wednesday’s decision was the second time the court ruled in favor of Idahoans United, whose ballot initiative aims to have a wide-reaching impact on Idaho’s abortion laws by allowing for abortion when the mother’s health is threatened and removing circumstances where health practitioners can be disciplined for providing, among other changes.
“A statement is not ‘clear’ if it leaves voters uncertain about a principal legal consequence of their choice, and it does not describe ‘the effect’ of a vote if it materially misstates that consequence,” Moeller wrote in the opinion.
The state statute requiring the statements be concise allows unnecessary details to be left out, but it doesn’t also allow for an “inaccurate picture of the effect of a specific vote,” Moeller wrote.
For the associated yes statement drafted by Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, the court found it didn’t convey what would be created by the vote and instead only spoke to abortion rights and “liability protections.”
At the same time, the statement left out how the initiative establishes an independent right to reproductive freedom and privacy and protects health practitioners from felony prosecution or licensing discipline that are currently in place, Moeller wrote.
Additional shortcomings were found in the no statement, which the court, agreeing with Idahoans United, found to be unclear in laying out the effects of the particular vote. The no statement tells voters the current law allows abortion “when necessary to protect the life of the mother,” but Idaho’s exception is only provided when a physician can determine “abortion is ‘necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.’”
Moeller wrote this phrasing “reasonably communicates” to voters Idaho’s law the protection is beyond the mere prevention of death, which is the case.
Moeller noted the statement also omits that Idaho’s abortion exceptions for cases of rape or incest are limited to the first trimester and require documentation of the incident and, in effect, “enlarges the exceptions.”
As a result of the highlighted shortcomings, the court has ordered McGrane and Labrador to submit revised yes and no statements by Saturday at 5 p.m.