LINCOLN — The fate of hot button issues like abortion and school choice rested in the hands of Nebraska's Supreme Court and Friday morning, they opened the path for those issues to make it to the ballot.
"We expected lawsuits. We knew anti abortion extremists were going to be doing everything they could to make sure we were not gonna be on the ballot. But at the end of the day we did prevail," said Allie Berry, the campaign manager for Protect Our Rights.
Last ditch efforts to remove the Protect Our Rights initiative from the ballot ended in failure after the Supreme Court ruled that Protect Our Rights, which looks to establish a constitutional right to an abortion, did not violate the constitutions single subject rule.
In a related ruling on a separate case the Justices also dismissed a similar challenge against the competing Protect Women and Children initiative which seeks to enshrine a 1st trimester ban in the state constitution.
"What it means is we have the chance to end Nebraska's harmful abortion ban by voting for the Protect Our Rights initiative and against our opposition. We will make sure Nebraskans get the healthcare they deserve," said Berry.
That means Nebraska will likely be the first state to give voters a choice to either amend abortion rights or abortion bans into the state constitution at the same time.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen has said if both pass then whichever initiative receives the most total votes will become law.
But it wasn't just abortion getting the election green light Friday. We talked with Omaha Catholic Schools superintendent Vickie Kauffold as the decision came down.
"There are a lot of good schools in our state. There are good public schools and good non-public schools and I just want families to have choices," said Kauffold.
Voters will have the final say on whether to give private schools tax payer money.
Opponents of School choice have had to work through two different petition drives after lawmakers tried to pull a fast one and replace LB753, the original school choice bill, with LB1402 to try and circumvent the ballot referendum.
They tried to challenge the latest referendum arguing it violated a part of the constitution preventing referendums on appropriations from the legislature.
The justices were not sympathetic to those arguments and ruled the referendum can make it to the ballot.
