State of Justice: September Cases in the Courts
Special Edition: Direct Democracy
Alaska
Giessel et al. v. State of Alaska and Repeal Now
The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the Alaska Division of Elections fulfilled its legal duty to prepare the ballot measure’s title and summary in a “true and impartial” manner. The court rejected challenges alleging that the proposal—which would repeal the ranked-choice voting system, open primary, and campaign-finance disclosure rules voters adopted in 2020—was unclear, politically partisan, and omitted crucial information. The court also ordered the division to explain that, if the measure passes, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor would run separately in partisan primaries and then together as a ticket in the general election. Alaska voters will see the question in the November election as Ballot Measure 2.
Arizona
Clark, et al. v. Fontes and Protect Education Accountability Now
The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the state’s process for removing duplicate signatures from petitions for a ballot proposal to curb the state’s controversial school-choice voucher program was valid. After a judge ordered the removal of duplicate signatures and signatures collected by ineligible petition circulators, approximately 24,000 signatures were struck. Supporters argued that the state’s method could require removing every signature in a duplicate set, rather than retaining one, and therefore could eliminate valid signatures. The court found no legal defect in the process and remanded the case for the final calculation. That calculation left the proposal without enough valid signatures, so Proposition 212 will not appear on the November ballot.
Arkansas
The Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to require the Arkansas secretary of state to place on the November ballot a measure that would have strengthened the state’s direct-democracy process. The initiative would have prevented the Arkansas legislature from amending or repealing voter-initiated and voter-approved state constitutional amendments. The challenge followed the secretary of state’s rejection of all 108,837 submitted signatures because the approximately 20,000 petition pages used a title that differed from the certified popular name. Supporters argued that the discrepancy should not silence voters who had signed the petitions, but the supreme court dismissed the suit in an order that did not explain its reasoning.
California
California Supreme Court orders Riverside County sheriff to return 650,000 seized ballots
On September 24, 2026, The California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco acted illegally in seizing 650,000 ballots related to the California redistricting initiative, ordering him to immediately return the ballots to the county registrar. State Attorney General Rob Bonta and advocacy groups had sued Bianco, who claimed he seized the ballots as evidence in an investigation following a complaint about their validity.
Idaho
Idahoans United for Women and Families v. McGrane and Labrador
The Idaho Supreme Court ordered the state’s attorney general and secretary of state to rewrite ballot language for a proposal that would repeal the state’s abortion ban, which is among the strictest in the nation. If adopted, the new law would make abortion legal until fetal viability, expand access to reproductive health care, give Idaho families the right to make private reproductive health care decisions without government interference, and eliminate criminal penalties for health care providers who perform abortions. The court ruled that the proposed language inaccurately described the consequences of the proposal’s passage or failure. It found that the language did not explain that passage would expand access to reproductive health care beyond abortion until fetal viability, including birth control and IVF. The court also found misleading the statement that rejection would leave in place a law banning abortion except to protect the mother’s life; the statute instead provides an exception when an abortion is necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. The court later accepted the state officials’ revised language, and the measure will appear before Idaho voters this November as Proposition 1.
Maryland
Maryland State Board of Elections v. Howell and Maryland State Board of Elections v. Wheatley
The Maryland Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to a new state law that will ask voters to approve an amendment to Maryland’s constitution that would change the state’s process for drawing congressional district maps. The general assembly passed the law in August and began the required process to ask voters to approve the constitutional amendment the law proposed. If approved, the amendment would establish constitutional requirements for drawing district maps, which strictly mandate compactness and geographic standards, apply only to state legislative district maps and would not affect the process for drawing congressional district maps. The changes would allow the legislature to redraw congressional district maps ahead of the 2028 presidential election, which the legislature seeks to do in response to other states’ mid-cycle redistricting efforts that will affect this year’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election. The law faced legal challenges immediately after its passage, alleging the legislature failed to follow constitutional requirements when drafting, debating, and ultimately enacting the law, and that its proposed language is legally deficient. A lower court blocked the proposal from appearing on the ballot, but the high court overturned the lower court’s ruling, allowing the proposal to appear before Maryland voters this November as Question 3.
Michigan
Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan v. Board of State Canvassers
The Michigan Supreme Court declined a petition to hear a challenge to the Board of State Canvassers’ decision to exclude a citizen-initiated ballot proposal from this November’s ballot after concluding the effort failed to gather the requisite number of signatures to attain ballot access. The proposal sought to amend the state’s constitution to require Michigan residents to prove citizenship when registering to vote and present a valid photo ID at the polls, and to establish penalties, including fines and prison sentences, for people who fail to comply. After randomly sampling 1,000 signatures, the board determined that the number of invalid or duplicate signatures in the sample indicated the effort would not reach the required number of valid signatures. The board gave the group that organized the proposal until its deadline to rehabilitate enough invalid signatures to reach the threshold, and the organizers attempted to secure affidavits of identity from people whose signatures were invalid. They fell three signatures short of the requirement by the board’s deadline, and they asked the state’s highest court to force the board to certify the proposal after it deadlocked in its certification vote. The court declined to hear the petition, and the group appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also declined to hear it.
Nebraska
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that a citizen-initiated proposal to amend Nebraska’s constitution cannot appear before voters this fall because it would violate the constitution’s requirement that citizen initiatives address only a single subject. The proposed amendment would have strengthened the state’s direct democracy process by requiring an 80% majority of the legislature to approve changes to constitutional amendments that voters initiated and adopted or to make further changes to the initiative process itself.
Nebraska voter Cara Ullman brought a legal challenge against Secretary of State Bob Evnen seeking to disqualify a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment known as the “Fairness for Girls” initiative. The proposed amendment would require public K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and private schools playing against them to designate athletic teams based on a student’s biological sex at birth. Ullman’s lawsuit argues that the petition’s required explanatory language was unconstitutionally vague and misleading. Specifically, she asserted that she signed the petition by mistake because she was misled about what the proposal would actually do, arguing that despite the proposal’s explicit intention to apply the changes to school sports, the language does not mention schools and does not adequately explain that the amendment is intended to apply to school sports, instead asserting only that the amendment will “establish constitutional protections for sex-separate athletics to ensure equal access to athletic opportunities for females.” The Nebraska Supreme Court initially declined to weigh in earlier in September but subsequently accepted the case and heard arguments on September 30. The measure has already been certified to appear before voters on the November 3, 2026, ballot.
Ohio
State ex rel. Blankenship v. Trenton City Council
The Ohio Supreme Court ordered officials in the city of Trenton to hold a special election to present a proposed amendment to the city’s charter before voters within 60 to 120 days of its ruling. Trenton residents initiated the proposal by gathering signatures to compel the city council to place a proposed charter amendment banning new data centers on the November ballot. City officials argued that the group misinterpreted the signature-gathering requirements by collecting signatures based on the number of voters who participated in the most recent municipal election and should have instead based them on the number of voters registered to vote at the time of the most recent municipal election. The high court agreed with the organizers’ interpretation of the requirements and ordered the city council to place the measure before voters in a special election within a 60-day window ending 120 days after the court’s order. City officials then determined the city could run a special election concurrently with a general election, and the measure will appear on the November midterm election ballot as Trenton Issue 17.
Washington
The Washington Supreme Court split 4–4 on a voter’s emergency request to prevent an impact disclosure from appearing with a November ballot initiative to repeal a recently enacted 9.9% tax on annual household income over $1 million, which is expected to generate $2.7 billion in its first year. Because the court was evenly divided, the request for emergency relief failed and the disclosure remained on the ballot; the court did not resolve the merits of the broader constitutional challenge. The voter argued that a 2022 law requiring the state to tell voters when a ballot proposal would affect the state budget violates the state constitution’s separation-of-powers clause. Under that law, Attorney General Nick Brown’s office drafted a statement disclosing that “[t]his measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).” The voter argued that the statement was not a “neutral, nonprejudicial disclosure,” as the law requires, and would prejudice voters against the proposal. The attorney general’s office responded that an injunction would “deprive the people of information that they are entitled to receive on their ballots.” Initiative 645 will appear on the November ballot while the broader constitutional challenge remains pending.
