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Competing abortion rights measures can appear on Nebraska ballot, high court rules
Competing measures that would expand or restrict abortion rights can appear on the ballot in Nebraska this fall, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled days after hearing arguments in three lawsuits that sought to keep one or both of the state’s competing abortion initiatives off the November ballot.
Organizers for the competing measures each turned in far more than the 123,000 required valid signatures needed to get them on the ballot.
One initiative would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until viability or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution Nebraska’s current 12-week abortion ban, passed by the Legislature in 2023. The ban includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant woman.
Two lawsuits — one brought by an Omaha resident and the other by a Nebraska neonatologist who both oppose abortion — argued that the measure seeking to expand abortion rights violates the state’s prohibition against addressing more than one subject in a bill or ballot proposal. They said the ballot measure deals with three separate issues: abortion rights until viability, abortion rights after viability to protect the woman’s health and whether the state should be allowed to regulate abortion.
A similar single-subject argument on an abortion rights ballot measure before the conservative Florida Supreme Court failed earlier this year.
A third lawsuit challenged the 12-week ban initiative. That filing argued that if the high court found the abortion rights measure failed the single-subject test, it also had to find that the 12-week ban initiative failed it.
The 12-week ban ballot measure would loop in at least six separate subjects to include regulating abortion in the first, second and third trimesters and separate exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, an attorney for that third lawsuit argued.
The state’s high court has offered mixed results on single-subject law challenges. In 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative seeking to legalize medical marijuana after finding that its provisions to allow people to use marijuana and to produce it were separate subjects that violated the state’s single-subject rule.
But in July, the court ruled that a hybrid bill passed by the Legislature in 2023 combining the 12-week abortion ban with another measure to limit gender-affirming health care for minors does not violate the single-subject rule. That led to a scathing dissent by Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman, who accused the majority of applying different standards to bills passed by the Legislature and those sought by voter referendum.
The court agreed to expedite its hearings and rulings on the lawsuits to eliminate the need for any proceedings at lower courts and to get the issue decided before ballots are printed across the state. The deadline to certify the Nebraska November ballot is Friday.
Nebraska will be the first state to carry competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, effectively ending 50 years of national abortion rights and making abortion a state-by-state issue. But the topic of abortion in general will be on the ballot in nine states across the country this year. Measures to protect access have also qualified to go before voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota.
New York also has a ballot measure that proponents say would protect abortion rights, though there’s a dispute about its impact. A measure is not on the Arkansas ballot, but an attempt to add it is being sought through litigation. Voters in all seven states with an abortion-related ballot measure since the reversal of Roe v. Wade have favored abortion rights.
Most Republican-controlled states have implemented abortion bans of some sort since Roe was overturned.
Fourteen states currently have bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions; four states ban it after about six weeks, which is before many women know they are pregnant. Nebraska and North Carolina are the only states that have opted for bans that kick in after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
NEW YORK — Former New York Gov. David Paterson and his stepson were attacked in New York City on Friday night, authorities said.
The incident occurred just before 9 p.m. on Second Avenue near East 96th Street on the Upper East Side, according to the New York City Police Department.
Police said officers were sent to the scene after an assault was reported. When officers arrived, police say they found a 20-year-old man suffering from facial injuries and a 70-year-old man who had head pain. Both victims were taken to a local hospital in stable condition.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the former governor said the two were attacked while “taking a walk around the block near their home by some individuals that had a previous interaction with his stepson.”
The spokesperson said that they were injured “but were able to fight off their attackers.”
Both were taken to Cornell Hospital “as a precaution,” he added.
Police said no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
The 70-year-old Paterson, a Democrat, served as governor from 2008 to 2010, stepping into the post after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer following his prostitution scandal. He made history at the time as the state’s first-ever Black and legally blind governor.
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A 17-year-old boy was critically injured and a person is in custody after a gunman opened fire on a SEPTA bus in North Philadelphia Friday evening, police said.
At around 6:15 p.m., Philadelphia police were notified about a shooting on a SEPTA bus traveling on Allegheny Avenue near 3rd and 4th streets in North Philadelphia, Inspector D F Pace told CBS News Philadelphia.
There were an estimated 30 people on the bus at the time of the shooting, Pace said, but only the 17-year-old boy was believed to have been shot. Investigators said they believe it was a targeted attack on the teenager and that he was shot in the back of the bus at close range.
According to Pace, the SEPTA bus driver alerted a control center about the shooting, which then relayed the message to Philadelphia police, who responded to the scene shortly.
Officers arrived at the scene and found at least one spent shell casing and blood on the bus, but no shooting victim, Pace said. Investigators later discovered the 17-year-old had been taken to Temple University Hospital where he is said to be in critical condition, according to police.
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Through their preliminary investigation, police learned those involved in the SEPTA shooting may have fled in a silver-colored Kia.
Authorities then found a car matching the description of the Kia speeding in the area and a pursuit began, Pace said. Police got help from a PPD helicopter as they followed the Kia, which ended up crashing at 5th and Greenwood streets in East Mount Airy. Pace said the Kia crashed into a parked car.
The driver of the crashed car ran away but police were still able to take them into custody, Pace said.
Investigators believe there was a second person involved in the shooting who ran from the car before it crashed. Police said they believe this person escaped near Allegheny Avenue and 4th Street, leaving a coat behind.
According to Pace, police also found a gun and a group of spent shell casings believed to be involved in the shooting in the same area.
“It’s very possible that there may have been a shooting inside the bus and also shots fired from outside of the bus toward the bus,” Pace said, “We’re still trying to piece all that together at this time.”
This is an active investigation and police are reviewing surveillance footage from the SEPTA bus.