ST. LOUIS — Two voter-approved ballot measures in Missouri are facing court battles.
A majority of voters in November’s election backed two major changes to state law. One was a historic amendment that would codify abortion access, a year and a half after Missouri became the first state to ban it following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Voters in six other states approved similar measures in November’s election. Another focused on wage changes that would guarantee earned paid sick time and increase the state’s minimum wage, something Missouri voters had approved two other times in the last decade.
Twenty-four states have a citizen initiative process, which gives residents a way to propose statues or changes to the state constitution on the ballot. Voters weighed in on about 160 ballot measures nationwide in November’s vote. On these latest proposals, anti-abortion advocates are fighting to keep some state abortion laws in place, despite the new reproductive health amendment, and business groups have challenged the wage hikes in court, arguing they would hurt business owners.
In deep-red Missouri, state Republican lawmakers have long said that the threshold for citizen-led initiatives is too low, an argument that’s persisted throughout the process for both measures.
“I absolutely continue to believe that Missouri’s constitution is vulnerable because of the way that it can be amended with a simple majority vote statewide,” Republican state Sen. Brad Hudson said, adding that he feels the current standards make it too easy to change the state’s guiding document.
READ MORE: Missouri voters approve measure to protect abortion rights
Republicans in the state have tried for years to make amending its constitution harder.
Although there have been attempts in other states, such as Ohio, to raise the threshold for ballot measures, many of them have been unsuccessful. Missouri’s own efforts to raise the threshold have also not gotten enough support to pass the state Legislature.
That’s in part because it’s a tough sell to voters.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at University of California at Davis, said the legislation targeting ballot initiatives, a way for voters to bypass their legislators, is a “hard lift” for Republicans in general “because even voters who are opposed to abortion don’t necessarily like the idea of ceding more power to the Legislature.”
What’s in the proposals?
In Missouri, both voter-approved measures saw pushback from the beginning.
Opponents tried to block the abortion-rights measure from appearing on the ballot, with a case reaching the state Supreme Court. The court allowed it to appear on the ballot for voters to decide. In the end, 51 percent of voters, more than 1.5 million people, voted yes.
Six other states, including Arizona, Colorado, and Maryland, passed ballot measures supporting abortion rights.
The initiative establishes the constitutional right to reproductive freedom. It allows for the state Legislature to enact policy regulating abortion after the point of “fetal viability,” but prevents the governing body from passing any laws that could restrict an abortion that would protect the pregnant person’s life or physical or mental health.
The minimum-wage initiative, known as Proposition A, sought to raise the floor from $12.30 an hour to $13.75. It would increase again toh $15 an hour in January 2026. More than 57 percent of voters, some 1.7 million people, said yes to the measure, which also requires some businesses to provide paid sick and family leave.
“Minimum wage is another issue that over the last several election cycles, when you put it before voters overwhelmingly passes,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive organization that tracks and supports ballot measures across the country. “That has been consistent in states like Missouri, where economic justice measures have really been a pillar to the organizing happening in the state and communities and organizations delivering for themselves.”
Hudson opposed the abortion and minimum wage measures , the latter of which he argued would be harmful to business owners and families.
Where do the challenges to the voter-approved measures stand?
Fewer than 24 hours after voters approved Amendment 3, Planned Parenthood and the Missouri ACLU filed a lawsuit to restore abortion access in the state. The suit asked that a preliminary injunction ease some of the restrictions as the litigation played out.
Afterward, state Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote in a letter to Missouri’s new Gov. Mike Kehoe that the adoption of Amendment 3 rendered “some statutes unenforceable.” He then released a 142-page response to Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, urging the 16th Circuit Court in Jackson County to deny the injunction, claiming that the plaintiffs “failed to provide any concrete evidence of harm.”
A judge ruled in late December that Missouri’s near-total abortion ban was unconstitutional after the new constitutional amendment took effect. The order from Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Jerri Zhan is temporary, halting some restrictions, while keeping others in place, as the case plays out.
“Right now, Planned Parenthood clinics can’t open and can’t provide care because not everything we asked for in that initial case was granted at the preliminary injunction level, said Tori Schafer, deputy director of policy and campaigns at Missouri ACLU.
The organization has filed a motion to reconsider the ruling, she added.
The litigation is expected to take months, Schafer said, and could reach the state Supreme Court for a final decision.
The ballot initiative, and the campaign behind it, was “the first step in this fight to get abortion access for Missourians,” she added, “and that fight is going to continue.”
READ MORE: Advocates in Missouri work to put abortion access on the ballot this election cycle
Under Proposition A, after the state minimum wage reaches $15 at the start of 2026, it would then be adjusted based on changes in the Consumer Price Index each January. Some exceptions apply for school districts, governmental entities, and educational institutions.
This is the third time Missourians have voted to raise the minimum wage, approving measures in 2006 and 2018. This latest version goes a bit further and guarantees paid sick leave for hundreds of thousands of workers starting May 1, requiring one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked.
“Raising the minimum wage, paid leave have been incredibly popular when we put them before voters,” Fields Figueredo said, “especially [in a] year like 2024, where inflation, the cost of gas, the cost of groceries, the ability for people to work and make ends meet, was a central issue,” Fields Figueredo said.
On Dec. 6, before the minimum wage hike was set to take effect, state business groups that opposed the increase filed a lawsuit. The plaintiffs, which includes groups such as the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Missouri Grocers Association, argued the election results in support of the measure must be set aside because its fiscal note summary is “insufficient and unfair.”
“Proposition A will impose two new and separate requirements on Missouri employers: a minimum wage increase and an entirely new paid sick leave requirement with extensive governmental oversight and enforcement,” the suit read.
Days after the measure took effect, the Missouri Restaurant Association, another plaintiff, called the new policy “a troubling misuse of the initiative process.”
“The repercussions could be devastating for restaurants and small businesses across the state, hindering growth and job creation,” the group’s online statement read.
The state Supreme Court did not hear the challenge before the new proposal went into effect in January. The court appointed County Circuit Judge Josh Devine as a commissioner to review the evidence and report his findings by Feb. 10.
The fight over ballot initiatives
Some Missouri Republicans still worry about how ballot initiatives get done.
Hudson has long been a supporter of raising the threshold for ballot initiatives. He’s in favor of requiring a 50-percent plus one statewide margin and winning the popular vote in more than half of the state’s congressional districts.
“I think it’s only fair that we are talking about amending the highest document in the state that you have buy-in from all areas of the state,” the newly elected senator said.
Hudson, who previously held office in the state’s House of Representatives, filed a bill last year to raise the threshold required to pass a constitutional amendment. The bill did not make it far. As the new legislative session begins, Hudson, now a state senator, said he’d support new legislation to alter the ballot measure process whether it’s introduced by him or another lawmaker.
“It matters not to me who the bill’s sponsor is. I just want to see something done,” he said.
Fields Figueredo said the ability to vote by ballot measure often receives support from voters on both sides of the aisle.
“If you look at how the votes were cast in Missouri, both of these initiatives transcends partisan lines really at a time of hyperpartisanship,” she said. “We’ve seen people come together and we see strong citizens support for measures regardless of party affiliation.”
Democrats in the state say the effort by some Republicans to raise the threshold is “a power grab.”
“What I see is a denial of a democracy to the citizens of the state of Missouri,” Democratic state Rep. Joe Adams told PBS News last year.
READ MORE: How Missouri Republicans want to change the process for voters to amend the constitution
For Hudson, especially when it comes to policy regarding abortion, he said, “We must recognize as policymakers that there are, as I said, fundamental human rights, that it is our job as elected individuals to protect.”
What happens next?
The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center has its eye on any new state bills that could make it more difficult to put forth ballot measures.
Ziegler said it’s too soon to tell how much of an impact these legal challenges will have on the ballot measures.
“If you look at the effort to get rid of Roe v. Wade as precedent, that took 50 years,” she said. “It’s too early to say that these amendments are here to stay in the states, but nothing that abortion opponents have tried has worked at the moment.”
