Politics, Elections and Government

Missouri judge rules abortion ban ballot summary is misleading and must be rewritten

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jason Rosenbaum

Published September 20, 2025 at 4:00 AM CDT

Brian Westbrook, founder and executive director of the anti-abortion rights group Coalition Life, speaks during a press conference outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in December 2024 in St. Louis' Central West End neighborhood.

GOP lawmakers placed a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would repeal Amendment 3, the abortion rights measure that Missouri voters approved last year. Except the new ballot summary didn't mention that it would ban abortion — so a Cole County Judge ruled that it must be rewritten.

A Cole County judge is ordering a new ballot summary for a proposal repealing most of a 2024 abortion rights amendment.

At the end of the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers placed on the ballot a constitutional amendment repealing what's known as Amendment 3, which legalized abortion up to fetal viability. The 2026 proposal, also known as Amendment 3, would allow Missouri to ban most abortions with exceptions for life of the mother, fatal fetal abnormalities, and some cases of rape and incest.

Opponents of that ballot measure sued, contending that the inclusion of a ban on gender affirming care for minors in the proposal violated a prohibition on proposing an amendment with multiple subjects. They also contended that a ballot summary was misleading. The original summary, which was written by the legislature, did not say that the proposal repealed much of the 2024 abortion rights amendment.

Cole County Judge Daniel Green ruled on Friday that the proposal could stay on the 2026 ballot, ruling that gender affirming care is "closely related to reproductive health care."

But he ordered Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to rewrite the ballot summary proposal since it "fails to adequately alert voters that the proposed constitutional amendment would eliminate [the 2024 abortion rights amendment], which voters recently approved."

Green gave Hoskins' office seven days to send over a revised summary statement. The parties in the case will then file briefs about whether the new summary is fair and sufficient.

Detractors of the proposal to repeal the abortion rights initiative contend the inclusion of the gender affirming care ban for minors is so-called ballot candy aimed at confusing voters to its actual intent.

And in their lawsuit, the plaintiffs also argued that a ballot summary statement claiming the amendment would "protect children from gender transition" is inaccurate since doctors would still be allowed to perform gender affirming surgery on babies who are born intersex. Green did not order that bullet point to be removed or revised.