Arkansas Supreme Court kills medical marijuana ballot measure

The legal tug-of-war over whether a ballot initiative to expand Arkansas’ medical marijuana program has come to an end, with the state’s Supreme Court ruling in a split decision that votes for the proposal cannot be counted because the measure’s name and title are misleading.

The ballot question, known formally as Issue 3, will be on the November ballot because it’s too close to Election Day to have it removed, but the Arkansas secretary of state won’t tabulate any votes cast for it now, given the high court’s ruling, the Arkansas Advocate reported. The court was split on the issue, and two justices recused themselves.

Associate Justice Shawn Womack wrote in the majority opinion that the measure’s name, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2024, has ramifications beyond medical uses of cannabis. In particular, Womack wrote, the measure also contains a trigger law that would legalize recreational cannabis if marijuana was also legalized at the federal level.

In addition, Womack wrote, the campaign did not “adequately” communicate to voters that the measure would quash the state legislature’s legal ability to tweak Amendment 98, the 2016 ballot question which legalized medical marijuana.

The bottom line is the measure is “plainly misleading,” Womack wrote, according to ABC News.

Womack was joined in the majority by special Justices Don Curdie and Bilenda Harris-Ritter, who took over for Chief Justice Dan Kemp and Justice Courtney Hudson after they recused themselves from the case. Justices Karen Baker, Rhonda Wood and Cody Hiland dissented, the Advocate reported. Hiland penned a scathing dissent, in which he slammed the court for not following decades of precedent with regard to ballot questions.

The conclusion to the legal drama comes after weeks of back-and-forth between Secretary of State John Thurston and Arkansans for Patient Access, the campaign that was behind the measure. Thurston originally found that the campaign didn’t submit enough signatures to make the November ballot after APA in July submitted about 114,000 voter petitions.

During a 30-day “cure” period, the campaign gathered even more, putting its total above 150,000, when it needed 90,704 valid signatures to make the ballot. In August, Thurston said it still hadn’t qualified.

APA filed suit against Thurston’s office, and the state Supreme Court ordered Thurston to finish counting the signatures that had been filed, before ruling on Monday that the number of signatures was a moot point because of the ballot title and language problems.

The APA said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” in the ruling and pledged to continue working to expand medical cannabis access in Arkansas, ABC News reported.

“It seems politics has triumphed over legal precedent,” the organization said.

Cannabis opponents celebrated the legal ruling. Jerry Cox, the executive director of Family Council Action Committee, told ABC News, “A measure this bad simply has no business being on the ballot or in the constitution.”

A campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Arkansas was shot down by voters in 2022. Issue 3 would have broadened the existing medical marijuana landscape by legalizing home cultivation for patients, increasing the number of medical professionals allowed to write patient recommendations, and by upping the number of medical ailments that qualify patients for the program.